On Missing Limbs
by fallacies
Summary: A Worm x MGSV crossover. Three months after she was found in her locker, Taylor Hebert wakes up in a hospital room. A sequence of short scenes, meant largely to be humorous. Not actually a fic where Taylor triggers with an alternate set of powers. The story is now concluded, and up for adoption/continuation.
1. Prologue: Visitor

**Venom: On Missing Limbs**  
a Worm x MGSV crossover 'oneshot'  
by fallacies

Three months after she was found in her locker, Taylor Hebert wakes up in a hospital room.  
A sequence of short scenes, meant to be largely humorous. Later snippets are a bit longer.  
Not actually a fic where Taylor triggers with an alternate set of powers.

* * *

oo. **Prologue: Visitor**

* * *

[It isn't your fault,] she said. [You couldn't have known.]

Through his mask, Colin stared at the comatose girl in the bed.

"No," he said. "I could've found out. It's only because I made a conscious decision to let Piggot have her way that I didn't."

Dragon didn't reply, but her expression in his head-up display laid bare her discomfort. She was kind by nature, and believed the better of him - even when he didn't necessarily deserve it. His lie detector indicated as much.

"Shadow Stalker was under my command," he said. "If I'd gotten on Piggot's case for superseding my authority in the management of the Wards, I might've picked up hints of the events leading up to this. Instead, I wanted to see Piggot hanging by her own rope."

Colin was a man driven by ego. All too often, self-benefit was the rule that shaped his course of action. This was a character flaw that he was all too aware of - and once every so often, the consequences of his choices would come back to bite him.

[The PRT /will/ be running an inquiry on Piggot,] Dragon softly replied, as if making a promise.

If it didn't happen, Dragon probably intended to put pressure on the organization until they complied. This, however, wasn't a carriage of justice that inherently did anything for the victim. It was too little and too late, and Shadow Stalker was still at large for her role in the girl's crippling injuries. The handsome indemnity paid to the girl's father did nothing to alleviate her past or current suffering, or resolve the ongoing threat to her life.

"If she wakes up," said Colin, "I'll make it up to her somehow."

[If she wakes up,] Dragon replied. [But I don't think it's healthy for you to obsess over this. The doctors indicated that cerebral hypoxia went on for long enough that it's a miracle she's even alive. Sections of her frontal and parietal lobes have been reduced to mush, and she barely scores a four on the Glasgow Coma Scale. At this point, we can't even tell if she possessed a corona pollentia or not - and that's a fairly distinct structure.]

None of this was new information; Colin had exhaustively familiarized himself with the girl's condition, and had forced himself to absorb several years of graduate-level neuroscience in the process.

"Are you familiar with the concept of compensation via neuroplasticity?" he asked.

[I'm aware that it's said to be the basis of the phantom limb syndrome in amputees,] Dragon replied. [But no, I'm not specifically familiar with it. Why?]

"The cortical pathways in the human brain remap themselves in response to injury," said Colin. "There was a case in 1943 where a woman was recorded to have fully recovered from a coma induced by a bullet wound to the brain. It's not entirely out of the question that something like that could happen here."

Within her camera feed, Dragon frowned.

[It's an astronomical improbability, Colin,] she said. [Please, don't be like this. You're just setting yourself up for disappointment.]

Colin grit his teeth, lowering his gaze to the sleeve at the girl's left.

"She's already given us one miracle," he said. "Another shouldn't be so far out of reach."


	2. Awakening

oI. **Awakening**

* * *

In my first minutes of consciousness, time seemed discontinuous - distorted.

The nurse adjusting the flowers on the table beside my bed noticed me moving about, and said something unintelligible - coming in close as if to confirm that I was awake before running off.

The next that I was aware, a balding man dressed like a doctor was standing at the right of my bed. The nurse from earlier looked on from a polite distance.

"Can you hear me?" he asked, speaking in an unplaceable accent - possibly Indian, or Middle Eastern.

I tried to respond, but my throat was dry and uncooperative. More noticeably, it felt as if there was something wrong with my right eye. I could open and close my eyelid, but I wasn't seeing anything through it. Had I gone blind?

"Are you having trouble speaking?" he asked, louder than necessary.

I opened my mouth, but when I failed to properly respond, he asked, "Can you move your head?"

I moved about, but it apparently wasn't enough to convince him that I was aware.

"Just nod if you can hear me," he said.

With colossal effort, I complied, bending my neck. It felt as if everything was far heavier than it should've been.

"Look up, please," said the doctor, making a hand gesture.

As I again attempted to comply, he put his hand to his chin in contemplation. I wasn't successful. After a few seconds of tilting my head, the muscular strain grew to be too much to bear, and I gave up - collapsing back to the mattress and panting.

"Very good," said the doctor, nodding with approval. "How do you feel now? Can you speak?"

I grunted in reply.

"What is your name?" he asked. "When were you born? Can you recall?"

"T- Taylor ... Hebert," I said. "Nine ... nineteenth of June ... 1995."

That much I could remember - but how had I arrived here? I assumed I was in a hospital of some sort. Brockton General? Why was I in a hospital?

"Good," said the doctor. "Now, then - please try to relax. There is plenty of time."

Plenty of time for what?

"I need to tell you something," he said. "Please listen, and try not to panic." He turned, pacing to the foot of my bed. "You've been in a coma for some time now."

A coma? I'd been in a coma? For how long?

The doctor noticed me straining to speak; maybe he saw the panic in my eye.

"Yes, yes, I know," he said, gesturing reassuringly - somehow, in a well-rehearsed manner. "You'd like to know the details." He paced to my left. "Not to worry. It hasn't been that long. You've been in my care for a bit over three months. It is now the twelfth of April, 2011."

April?

Over three months?

That meant I'd gone into a coma in January...

... the locker. The goddamn locker.

The memories flooded back - of Madison, giggling across the hallway; of Emma, smiling quietly.

Of Sophia.

The pounding of my heart grew loud, and I struggled to get up; to get away, by any means possible. Dimly, I was aware that the doctor was shouting something at the nurse, but I couldn't make it out. I couldn't focus on the present.

"Calm down," somebody said, as I faded out. "Please, calm down!"

Rushing to my side, the nurse injected a syringe into the IV hanging above me.

"Don't panic," said the doctor. "Just keep calm. We're here for you."

An unnatural lethargy began to settle over me. It was a bluntness - like blanket of stillness that spread through my limbs. Unable to keep my eyes open, I succumbed.

Then, I was lost again in the month of January.


	3. Present Status

o2. **Present Status**

* * *

The cycle of waking and unconsciousness continued, until I began to come to terms with the changes in my body, and grasp the state of my life without falling into a panic. Each new revelation was devastating; a fresh lesson of loss, as if my prior suffering held no meaning or weight.

A week after my awakening, I had arrived upon a rough understanding of the how and what of my present circumstances.

The Trio had confined me to my locker on a Monday in January, and left me there to rot amidst the filth and used needles that they'd gathered. At some undetermined point soon after, I suffered a psychotic break, and attempted to claw my way out - banging my head against the metal surfaces of the compartment to draw attention. The doctor wasn't certain as to how long this went on, or why nobody came to help, but I ended up injuring myself severely and bleeding to unawareness.

My father arrived home that evening to find me absent, and he'd immediately called the Barnes to see if they knew where I was. Predictably, Emma claimed that she hadn't seen me, and so he'd informed the police. A search was conducted, but there wasn't any indication as to where I'd gone. A cursory search through my bedroom and belongings uncovered evidence of bullying, and the cops began to build a case that I might have run away or committed suicide.

The following day at noon, a janitor making rounds had noticed a strong stench emanating from one of the hallways. Approaching, he noticed fluids dripping from the base of my locker, and cut through the padlock to have a look inside. Finding me, he'd called for the ambulance.

The tissue in my left arm was entirely necrotic by that point, and I sustained brain damage from physical trauma and blood loss. Owing to some combination of that, I'd lost the use of my right eye - despite it being technically uninjured.

Winslow received word of my condition before my father did. With an uncharacteristic efficiency, a lawyer under the school district's employ ambushed my father with a very premature out-of-court settlement just as he arrived at the hospital.

Somehow, Dad managed not to injure the lawyer. The settlement was tossed out, and he'd pressed the cops for a thorough investigation. As useless as the Brockton Bay PD typically seemed, in the subsequent weeks, they managed to actually dredge up results. Witness testimony was secured, and a court date was decided.

Then, Sophia went missing, and things became complicated.

Apparently, she was a Ward under the Protectorate East North-East. It wasn't hard to guess which one.

"They made me sign a waiver," Dad explained, seated at my bedside. His voice was low and soft; tired, much as he appeared. "Pretty soon, they'll probably have you do the same. We don't get a public trial, or really any way to refuse their terms. In return, they've agreed to meet any of our demands - within reason."

"What are their terms, exactly?"

"Simply put, we accept twenty-four surveillance and a PRT officer posted at our doorstep. We don't talk about this Hess girl at all, to anyone. Emma and the Clements girl /will/ get what's coming to them, but no details regarding the case can be made public." Dad turned his eyes aside. "Fucking bureaucrats."

"Why the surveillance? Is it because of Sophia?"

"Yeah. They think she could try and do something. I'm not sure what sort of difference they think a single unpowered PRT goon could make if she actually has the guts to turn up at our house."

"You don't think she will?"

"You'd know better than I do," said Dad, exhaling and leaning back into his chair. "Personally, I don't think it's likely. They have her on the run. It'd be far easier for her to just disappear and never come back. She is a known fugitive, after all - and disappearing is her power."

I frowned. The threat of arrest never seemed to stop any of the major parahuman criminals. I couldn't imagine it stopping Sophia if she really wanted to harm me.

Her power wasn't disappearing. It was to harm others without being harmed.

Dad decided to change the subject.

"Panacea agreed to come and heal you, by the way," he said, "but only if you personally consent. For whatever reason, she wouldn't let me request healing on your behalf. If you want, I can ring her up. She said that she can give you back your arm."

I looked to my left, lifting what remained of my missing arm. It had been amputated from the elbow down, but muscular feedback somehow hadn't gone away. I could feel my fingers when I thought to flex them; feel the blunted pressure of muscular strain as they invisibly bent.

"I heard that she doesn't do brains," I said.

"Yeah. She told me as much when I asked if she could wake you. I think my attitude might've offended her."

Panacea wouldn't be able to correct my vision, in other words.

"I wanna ask her to help me recover my muscular tone," I said, "but not to replace my arm."

Dad shot me a perplexed look.

"Why not?"

I met his gaze with my eye.

"I've learned a lesson," I said. "I don't want to pretend that it never happened."


	4. On My Mark

o3. **On My Mark**

* * *

I realized that I'd triggered back in the locker on the Saturday after Panacea healed me, when the hospital finally took me off the cocktail of sedatives they'd been feeding to me intravenously. My power was subtle, and definitely not a capital-P /Power/.

I could track people. So long as I established a direct line of sight to a target and concentrated, I could obtain a persisting 'awareness' of a person's location - allowing me to 'see' them through walls and other visual obstacles. The awareness lasted only so long as I maintained consciousness, and only if the target stayed within a certain range of my body - maybe a few hundred meters. Beyond that, I would lose my 'grasp,' and a returning target would have to be processed anew.

Binoculars would probably be useful.

My power didn't work with inanimate objects, but with a little experimentation, I learned that there wasn't a limit to the quantity of targets I could simultaneously track. I also wasn't strictly limited to humans; the birds outside my hospital room window could be located out of sight as well - but trees or other flora were out of bounds. The 'target' had to be an animal of some sort, it seemed.

I decided to call the ability 'Marking.'

Per PRT classifications, I now ranked as a low-level Thinker. It didn't feel as if my power would give me an edge in a fight - but defensively, it had some definite potential. If it turned out that I could pierce Stranger abilities with tracking, escaping from Sophia in the event of an attack wouldn't be problem.

Imagining at the beginning that Dad would somehow be assured of my safety if he knew that I was a parahuman, I gave some serious consideration to a full disclosure. Thinking through it a bit more, though, I realized that he already had far too much on his plate to deal with something like this. There was an often-quoted statistic about the life expectancy of a newly triggered cape, and I knew that he knew about it.

There wasn't a good rationale to tell him about my ability just yet. More to the point, I wasn't sure if I was mentally ready for any kind of adverse reaction to my power on Dad's part. I could put it off until I was through with physiotherapy, at the least.

The knowledge that I was a parahuman did firm my resolve, however. I had a goal in mind, now; a path to follow. Even if I didn't exactly possess what it took to walk the walk of a costumed cape, I'd had quite enough of turning the other cheek to the myriad abuses the Trio had dished out. I would never knowingly put myself into that sort of situation again.

Maintaining the moral high ground had gotten me stuffed into a locker. Ergo, 'being the bigger person' could go fuck itself.

I would make myself stronger - strong enough to strike back.

Taylor Hebert would be as diamonds.


	5. The Short Mile

o4. **The Short Mile**

* * *

According to Panacea, my flesh was restored to the point where I theoretically possessed a 'normative' strength and endurance for a teenage girl of my age, height, and overall build. Assuming that she hadn't miscalculated anything, and wasn't lying, it seemed that I might have accidentally stumbled into a secondary power.

Four minutes ago, I'd arrived at the campus athletics field at Brockton Bay Community College for my first mile-long run since December - something that I'd planned as a simple measure of my progress toward a full recovery. Twenty-five seconds ago, I reached the conclusion of four complete laps about the four-hundred meter Olympic-standard running track. Seated now upon the bleachers, I've managed already to mostly catch my breath.

I was exhibiting what Earth Aleph comics referred to as 'peak human physicality' - or some approximation of it, anyways.

A 'perfect' mile was nothing to scoff at. To the best of my knowledge, the four-minute barrier hadn't yet been surmounted by any female athlete objectively proven not to be parahuman.

If I wasn't entirely certain I was cheating my ass off, I might've even felt proud.

Rehydrating myself with a cold sports drink and looking on as the other runners passed, I vaguely wondered how the power worked; it didn't seem as if I was much stronger or better conditioned than before, and I definitely wasn't more muscular in appearance. The last time Panacea examined me - three days prior - she hadn't verbally made a note of anything unusual about my biology.

Was this therefore a power that selectively operated during intense physical activity? Did it, for example, improve muscular efficiency or reduce the buildup of tissue acidity? Or was it maybe a result of there being something terribly wrong with my perception of pain and muscular stress, caused by brain damage? I'd heard about non-parahumans with situational hypoalgesia performing Brute- or Mover-like physical feats.

If something like that were in play, though, why was my awakening in the hospital so difficult? Why did I still feel pain in my left arm?

I didn't know if I would find any real answers, but clearly, more experimentation was required. I had to define the practical limitations of the physical abilities that I now possessed - simply to pin down the reliability of my body as a defensive instrument. It wouldn't do for it to betray me unexpectedly.

'At the least,' I thought, taking another gulp from my bottle, 'I've just confirmed that we won't be receiving another bill for physiotherapy next month ...'


	6. Armsmaster

o5. **Armsmaster**

* * *

The Protectorate and the PRT put a visible effort into making amends, if only to cover themselves. At the end of the month, costs were waived, and the bills were magically taken care of, as if the people in charge thought that throwing money at us would make their oversights with Sophia somehow go away.

Dad, who distrusted the establishment as a rule, warned me repeatedly that nobody was this nice unless they wanted to bleed us for concessions down the road. When Armsmaster paid us a house call to personally apologize, he was very nearly turned away.

Maybe because there was some part of me couldn't get over the fact that one of my childhood heroes had come to visit, I intervened.

"Let's just hear him out, Dad," I said.

"Taylor. We talked about this."

I drew my lips into a line and gave Dad a look. After what felt like an entire minute, he relented, and invited Armsmaster inside.

The black case that Armsmaster was carrying looked like it was designed for some sort of brass band instrument. Directed to have a seat in the armchair opposite of us, he set the case down upon the coffee table.

"I'm here as an individual, and not as a representative of any organization," he said, undoing the clasps and lifting the lid. "I'd like it if you could accept this as a token of my sincerity."

Within, there was a prosthetic arm - a matte red robotic-looking limb whose design made very little effort to appear natural or lifelike, unlike the variety that the hospital had presented me. It wasn't precisely crude in appearance, but it gave the impression that aesthetics had been sacrificed for functionality.

"You're giving this to us for free?" I asked, slightly bewildered.

A decent myoelectric prosthetic cost between twenty-five to thirty-five thousand dollars, and Tinkertech models were at the least triple that amount. Given that Armsmaster was considered one of the foremost Tinkers in the country unaffiliated with Toybox, a personal creation of his was likely to be bank-breaking. Maybe there was a bit of merit to Dad's concerns about excessive charity.

"No, not for free," Armsmaster replied. "You've paid for it already. I'm giving it to you because my ego and vanity would demand no less."

I opened my mouth, but didn't know what to say. The fact that a charitable act was being performed out of ego wasn't something that a normal person would admit to a stranger.

"What about maintenance cost?" Dad asked, still suspicious. "This /is/ Tinkertech, isn't it? You expect for us to pay you when it breaks down?"

Armsmaster shook his head.

"It isn't Tinkertech," he said. "It's a replica I built of a titanium-alloy prosthetic developed by DARPA in the 1980's. Might be a bit of an antique, but you won't find anything on the market capable of matching it per latency-free interpretation of biosensor input. Use is entirely intuitive, and just about identical to controlling a flesh and blood limb."

Ignoring the clear mistrust in Dad's expression, I lifted the arm from its case. It was surprisingly light, and where there weren't exposed electrodes, the tube of the arm socket was lined with soft, breathable foam. Setting it on my lap, I rolled up my sleeve, and picked it up again, sliding it over my stump. It made for a comfortable fit.

"Hold down on the release button near the rim for a pneumatic lock," Armsmaster supplied.

I did as he instructed, and the lining inflated with air, securing the socket over my bicep. Experimentally, I tried to open and close my fist, but the response was disappointingly unsteady and arthritic. I was, however, in direct control.

"It'll take a few days for you to get use to it," said Armsmaster. "I would suggest closing your eyes and concentrating on the movement."

"You didn't answer my question," Dad interrupted, leaning forward. "What do we do if it breaks? Even if it isn't Tinkertech, there's no way we can just fix something like this without expertise."

Armsmaster's mask and helmet exposed only the lower half of his face, and going on the expression of his mouth alone, I couldn't tell if he was annoyed or not.

"I don't have the time today," he replied, "but the next time I visit, I'll demonstrate the procedures for basic maintenance. If at any point you find that the prosthesis has been damaged beyond your capacity for repair, just bring it to me, and I'll resolve the issue without charge."

Propping his elbow against the armrest of the sofa, Dad rubbed fingers to his brow and exhaled.

"The next time you visit," he repeated in monotone, giving a brief, humorless chuckle. "Tell me, why are you doing this? If you'll excuse my language, I don't buy this crap about you being here to apologize. If it were just an apology, you wouldn't need to bribe us with something so far in excess of the indemnity we already received."

"I'm doing this for personal reasons," said Armsmaster. "Just accept it at face value. There isn't a hidden cost, or anything I'm expecting in return." He turned to me, and I had the distinct impression that he was making eye contact through the opacity of his mask. "I've witnessed the considerable effort that Ms. Hebert's put into her physical rehabilitation, and for my part in the events three months ago, I felt that I owed it to her to offer my support as necessary; to ease things along as my resources permit. All that I ask is for you to indulge me."

He'd observed me running, I realized.

He knew.

The reason that he'd come today was to communicate his understanding, and to indicate his desire to sponsor me - presumably as an independent hero. I had obvious reason to hold a grudge against the PRT and Protectorate, and so he'd approached me only in his capacity as a private individual - forgoing the predictable overtures of organizational recruitment. Moreover, as he suspected that I hadn't yet revealed my trigger to Dad, he'd kept it as a secret on my behalf.

Armsmaster could be trusted, I felt; he was a hero, and it didn't seem as if he was positioning himself for blackmail. Likely, I could refuse, and nothing would be lost. On the other hand, I /was/ very much interested in bolstering my defensive capabilities. Even if I wasn't cut out to be a cape, it would be a lie to claim that an offer of miscellaneous support didn't hold any appeal.

It didn't take long for me to decide upon my course of action.


	7. Close Quarters

o6. **Close Quarters**

* * *

"This is Lieutenant Joseph Iriomote of the Brockton Bay Police Department," said Smith - mispronouncing 'lieutenant' as 'leftenant' per usual. "He'll be assisting me with your final assessment."

In the instruction of modern close quarters combat, there weren't any formal rules of engagement, but out of habitual politeness, Joe nodded slightly as he sized up his opponent.

She was a tall, slender girl - gangly, with just enough build that she couldn't be mistaken for an emaciated runway model. By facial features, she wasn't particularly ugly or attractive, but her missing arm and the plain black patch over her right eye set her aside in a category of her own.

Smith, being the prick that he was, had informed Joe beforehand only that he was sparring against a 'promising new trainee' introduced by an acquaintance - and somehow, he'd neglected even to hint that the girl was physically disabled. If not for the fact that he'd made it a personal rule never to back out of anything after giving his word, Joe would've briskly exited the gym without a second glance.

He didn't like being made to play the bully.

In the first place, he didn't understand why somebody of the girl's disadvantages would want to be trained in the hand-to-hand component of CQC.

If it was purely for self-defense, there were other disciplines more suited to her body type and disposition - without the explicit expectation that any opponents engaged would be armed and dangerous. Outside of applications in the special forces and police or PRT crisis response, there weren't very many venues where training like this was absolutely necessary. The organizations that designated CQC as a mandatory skill of the trade preferred, after all, to acquire assets that weren't missing an eye or a limb.

Smith had probably requested Joe's presence only because he found it amusing to see his best friend utterly mystified.

"Don't hold back on me," said the girl, nodding at him in reply.

From female sparring partners, Joe had occasionally heard the same words spoken flirtatiously; or with an undercurrent of heat, as a response to a perceived slight. Neither was applicable here. The statement was delivered as an earnest request - as if the girl were promising not to complain about having her face beaten in during the match. The attitude somehow rubbed Joe the wrong way.

If no holds barred was what she wanted, Joe would oblige. Maybe it would teach her not to take her health for granted.

"The match will go until one side surrenders or is unable to continue," said Smith. "Any questions?"

The girl shook her head to the negative.

"In that case, begin."

Speed of action was the concern of highest priority in CQC; Joe was upon the girl almost as the Smith gave the word. Under ideal circumstances, an opponent would be eliminated before they could formulate an appropriate response - overwhelmed by the abruptness of an attack. Taking advantage of the girl's blindness, his weapon of choice was a clean left hook to the face.

His fist should've impacted without allowing her an opportunity to retaliate - but without missing a beat, the girl pressed into his guard, taking ahold of his forearm. The urgency with which he'd committed his weight was now turned against him; and using his own strength, she performed an over-the-shoulder throw.

'She can see through the eyepatch?' he thought, turning his torso in mid-air and landing on his feet.

Breaking away, he smoothly drew the padded training baton strapped to his belt and swung it at her left in a wide horizontal arc. The layers of foam that coated the weapon would undoubtedly blunt the blow, but Joe had put enough force into the swing that the metal tube within could still fracture a bone on direct collision.

He'd expected her to dodge and to provide him with an opening. Instead, she placed the stump of her left arm into the path of the arc - moving with blow as it impacted, and guiding the inertia away from her. Twisting her body along his angular momentum, she spun outside of his swing and slammed the elbow of her good arm into the back of his right shoulder.

Stunned by the blow, he found his neck suddenly encircled from behind by the crook of the girl's arm. For a moment, it seemed that she would try for a one-armed choke-hold - but a leg-sweep stole his footing instead, and a force was applied to his trachea, wheeling him downwards into the floor-mat.

* * *

A splash of water brought Joe to consciousness.

"Wakey wake," said Smith. "It's closing time."

The room was dark, and half the lights on the ceiling were already off - but the one LED lamp directly above his face was bright enough to make him squint.

"Shit," he said, shading his eyes. "How long was I out?"

"About two hours," Smith replied, squatting down beside him. "So. What do you think?"

Turning his face slightly, Joe deadpanned, "I think you look like an idiot, wearing those Ray-Bans indoors at night."

With the remainder of the water in his disposable cup, Smith splashed him again.

"I was talking about Anne, you arse," he said.

Joe chuckled.

"She's pretty good," he replied, slowly sitting up. "Way better than I thought."

"Comments or advice, at all?"

Staring up into the ceiling, Joe mentally reviewed the match.

"Some of those moves she has aren't really kosher. What was that last bit? A variant of the major outer drop?"

"Something like that. I don't know if it has a proper name in Judo."

"That thing could've crushed my windpipe if she didn't execute it just right. Get down to it, and it's just barely on this side of a non-lethal take-down. Not something she wants to use in a sparring match."

"Duly noted."

"And tell her to get rid of the fake eyepatch," Joe continued. "Thirty seconds into an engagement, and anyone with a decent amount of experience would know that her eyes are perfectly fine. It's just vaguely insulting that somebody as skilled as she is would resort to using cheap gimmicks like that."

"It isn't a gimmick, actually," said Smith, dropping to the mat on his rear. "She really is blind in her right eye, and until about three weeks ago, she never had any training in hand-to-hand combat."

Incredulous, Joe raised a brow.

"You're shitting me, right? She a cape or something?"

Smith just smiled.


	8. Dogs of War

o7. **Dogs of War**

* * *

"... four, five ... six."

I lowered the infrared scope that Armsmaster had given me. It didn't look as if I'd be able to spot the rest of the guards from the exterior of the building.

On the surface, it was just another boarded-up edifice in the outer boundary of the Downtown - but in the past week, Armsmaster's aerial drones had spotted trucks pulling up in the rear loading bay, and men in Empire colors loitering about the front. Probably, the gang was using the place as a storage facility for something.

Unlike the Merchants, the Empire Eighty-Eight kept their territory largely drug-free - but they did occasionally deal in other contrabands and illegal arms. Complying with my request for a general abilities assessment, Armsmaster had assigned me the task of performing reconnaissance for him - to scout ahead and try to identify whatever product the Empire was peddling.

I guess, for a cape, this could be considered a fairly typical first outing. I even had a crappy, low budget costume courtesy of the local army surplus outlet.

[I'm going to ask you this one last time, just to be safe,] said Dragon, over my earpiece. [Are you absolutely sure you want to go ahead with this?]

"My answer hasn't changed since an hour ago," I replied, dropping over the side of the stair-rail to the lower level of the fire escape, and then to the ground. "Don't worry. If things do get dangerous, I'll scram immediately."

The world's greatest Tinker was easier to converse with than Armsmaster, surprisingly. It was still rather surreal that I'd managed to make the acquaintance of an internationally renowned cape - but it was in the end an association negotiated at Armsmaster's convenience, and not something I could attribute to any of my own merits. As leader of the Protectorate East North-East, Armsmaster's professional obligations prevented him from providing me with consistent or direct oversight. Dragon, whose primary duties were related to Tinkertech mass product, apparently had the time to spare, and so he'd gotten her to sign on as my radio support. If anything happened to me, she would see it from the wireless camera strapped to the belt of my military fatigues.

[I know you feel you're able to safely handle unpowered opponents, but I would still prefer it if you tried to avoid combat entirely,] said Dragon. [Your ability set really isn't suited to direct confrontation - and in the circumstance that you're discovered, it would take between five or ten minutes for Armsmaster to arrive as backup, depending on where he is in his patrol route. Just get in and get out without being seen. Keep things quick and simple. Remember that you're only here to collect information.]

"I'll try keep that in mind," I said, pulling my balaclava over my face.

It was nice that she wanted to keep me out of danger, but in the long run, learning my way about a live engagement would provide me with significantly more safety than a run of overly sanitized sparring matches in a gym. The point of this exercise was to see if the skills and abilities I'd recently acquired would stack up against the demands of a real-world situation.

I could hazard a guess as to why Dragon was worried, though: In a conflict of parahuman powers, victory tended to be absolute; even if one or both of the parties involved were injured in the process, the outcome of a fight generally entailed that the losing side was overwhelmed with a particular use of power or technology that permitted no retaliation or opportunity for escape. Neither of the abilities that I'd thus far exhibited could bring about a triumph so decisive - and to an experienced cape like Dragon, that meant that I was a little more than an unpowered combatant with a bit of extra stamina.

She wasn't wrong, precisely. Fortunately for me, not everything in the world had to be dictated by the logic of cape fights.

I circled the block twice, taking note of possible escape routes before slowly making my approach. In the derelict, doorless shipping depot across the rear alley from the Empire site, a large quantity of cardboard boxes had been left arbitrarily stacked amidst the rows of rusting metallic shelves. In a worst case scenario, it wouldn't be difficult for me to lose a pursuer within, and so I kept it in mind.

[They're using standard radio communications,] said Dragon. [I'll patch the chatter on their frequency over to your headphones.]

"Thanks," I said quietly, closely watching from behind the adjacent building as one of the Empire thugs rounded a corner, away from me.

When he'd moved out of sight, I crossed alleyway in a dash, kicking off the ground and pulling myself up on to the platform of the loading bay. As quietly as I could, I rotated the doorknob of the staff entrance, which was thankfully unlocked.

Almost as soon as I was through the doorway, there was a palpable change in the atmosphere about me - akin to the tactile pressure of a mark's position, but 'diffuse.' As far as I understood, this particular sensation was an indicator of 'presence'; probably a consequence of my marking ability, except that it activated automatically in the vicinity of any living organism over a certain size. In the hospital, just after my awakening, the omnipresence of patients and medical personnel had kept me from noticing - but the first time I was left alone after Dad brought me home, the atmospheric shift had been stark and noticeable.

With soft, careful steps, I paced along the passage that exited the loading bay - stopping just before the end of a T-intersection, and leaning my back against the right wall. The left corridor terminated at a stairwell, and there wasn't anyone there. Likely, it meant that one of the Empire thugs was behind me, down the right corridor. Taking my chances, I leaned forward for a peek.

"Huh!?" said a man's voice.

Time slowed to a craw - literally.

Two meters from my hiding spot, a cigarette fell to the floor from between the fingers of a skinhead ganger. As if recorded by a high-speed camera and played back at a greatly reduced rate, the movement progressed at a snail's pace - inching downwards toward the floor as surprise gradually twisted the man's face.

On reflex - without even really considering the bizarreness of the situation, or the how or why - I stood up and moved. The air that enveloped my body had become as a viscous fluid, resisting my limbs like molasses as my heart pounded within my ears. Still, I pressed forward as rapidly as I could - drawing my combat knife from its sheathe, and placing the skinhead's neck and arm in a firm hold.

Time resumed as I dragged him to the floor.

"Where are the goods?" I whispered, pressing the edge of the knife to his throat.

"Wh- who are you?" he asked, not daring to raise his voice. "He- Hellhound? Please don't kill me!"

"Answer the question."

"D- downstairs," he said. "The dogs are downstairs."

Dogs?

[The Empire Eighty-Eight operates an underground dog fighting circuit,] Dragon interjected. [I suppose they might've run out of space in their normal holding location, and decided to keep the rest of the animals here.]

Either Dragon had picked up the info through her association with Armsmaster, or she had the PHO Wiki entry on the Empire open in front of her. Personally, I hadn't heard about the gang doing anything of the sort, and I'd lived in Brockton Bay my entire life.

"And what about your friends?" I asked.

"Th- there's a guy downstairs with the keys," the skinhead replied. "Other than that, I don't know."

I blinked. Out of nowhere, two new presences had manifested within my awareness: one below me, in the basement; and the other seated in a room down the corridor. I vaguely recalled reading that parahuman powers didn't permit direct mind-to-mind communications - but if it wasn't that I was somehow pulling information from the thug's brain, where was this coming from?

'Analyze it later,' I decided. 'I'll have time to think on it when I get outta here.'

I locked the man in a half Nelson choke, applying force to his neck until his body went limp. When I was satisfied that he wasn't faking unconsciousness, I resheathed my knife and lifted him in a fireman's carry.

[How did you do that just now?] asked Dragon.

"You'll have to be a bit more specific?" I replied, backtracking to the interior of the loading bay.

[The moment you were discovered, your reaction time suddenly spiked.]

Given how slowly my body had been moving, I didn't think Dragon would've noticed. Still, she /was/ supposed to be some sort of super-genius.

"It's another facet of my power that I wasn't aware of, apparently," I said. "Don't know what triggered it, but time seemed to temporarily slow down. Might have something to do with an adrenaline rush?"

Opening up a broom closet that I'd spotted on the way in, I set the skinhead on the floor, drawing out a pair of plasticuffs from a pouch in my chest rig and securing the zip ties about his wrists and ankles. Out of consideration, I propped his torso upright against a corner, and carefully shut the door.

[When they find him, or notice that he isn't responding, they'll know that something's up,] Dragon warned. [You've already identified what they were using the site for, so you'll want to get out of there as soon as possible.]

"Not yet," I said, heading to the opposite wall.

Hitting the switch connected to the rear shutter door, I paused long enough to confirm that it was retracting properly, despite the rust. My existing marks weren't close enough to hear the mechanical noise of the scrolling, probably - but I had no real way to know for certain that it wouldn't be detected by the thugs I hadn't spotted.

[What are you doing?] asked Dragon, exasperated. [Somebody's going to notice!]

"I won't stick around for that long," I said. "I'm just gonna see if I can let out the dogs."

[This is reckless ...]

Descending to the basement, I made my way down the corridor to the room where the mark was situated. Through the wall, I confirmed that he was looking away before entering the room - using the loud barking from the room to the side to mask my footsteps as I approached. The wolfish-looking dog in the cage he was facing barked and wagged his tail at my presence.

"The fuck you so happy about, you stupid mutt?" asked the man.

Reaching over the thug's shoulder, I pushed my palm over his chin, simultaneously sweeping his right leg from under him and forcing his skull to the floor. The impact rendered him swiftly unconscious, and I spared no time in patting him down. The keys the skinhead had mentioned were in the left pocket of his jeans. Conveniently, written numbers had been taped on to each one.

"Let's see, now," I muttered, matching the key tagged as '#9' to the permanent marker on the panel of the cage's lock.

The key turned with a click, and I removed it, pulling open the gate to let the dog out. To my surprise, he didn't immediate escape. Instead, he leapt on top of me, knocking me down and licking all over my balaclava. The old scar over his right eye gave him a kind of mean look, but behavior-wise, he seemed pretty friendly. Was he trained?

"Whoa," I said. "Calm down, boy."

I gently pushed him off of me, getting up into a crouch as he wagged his tail expectantly. Seeing that he seemed to want my praise, I pet him on the head.

Above and around me, presences materialized: Eight dogs in the next room, and six humans that I hadn't noticed upstairs. I stared at the wolfdog, who only panted at me happily. It didn't seem as if he'd initiated this - whatever it was. Was I able to pull positions from the brains of animals as well?

I shook my head. Experimentation could wait. For now, I had to finish what I started.

[Be careful,] said Dragon. [These things are trained to kill, and you don't know what diseases they might have.]

"It's just a feeling, but I think I can trust this one," I said, pulling open the door to my right.

The dogs in the adjacent room weren't nearly as friendly. Growling at me with clear hostility, the one in the first cage on my left snapped his jaw at my fingers when I reached for his lock. The wolfdog, who hadn't yet abandoned me, barked angrily and growled - somehow intimidating the others into backing down.

Finding the key to the first cage - #1 - I opened the gate. Gingerly, the dog within emerged, looking to us warily. The wolfdog barked again, and the other bolted from the room in a panic.

"You're their alpha or something?" I asked.

A happy bark was all that I got in reply.

The dogs in the other cages didn't give me any problems, but just as I let the last one out, radio static sounded in my earpiece.

[Something's goin' on,] said a man. [The dogs are outta their cages, and they're getting away!]

[The fuck?] said another. [Harrison! You hear me? What the fuck is happening down there?]

It was time to make an exit.

"C'mon, boy," I said to the wolfdog. "Let's go."

Dashing out of the room and past the unconscious man, I made a break for the stairs. Behind me, the patter of the wolfdog's running confirmed that he'd understood my intent.

[He ain't responding,] somebody said as we reached the first floor. [It's gotta be Hellhound again. Call for help. We don't got the firepower to deal with a cape.]

[I'm on it.]

One of my marks was in the rear alleyway, cocking a gun - though not in the direction of the open loading bay. Leaping off the side of the platform, I dove into a roll and recovered my footing a little more than a meter behind him. It was distance enough to prep a straight punch with my prosthetic, which I launched into his face just as he responded to the noise. Dropping him with the force of the blow, I ran through one of the doors of the shipping depot across the alley - diving prone behind one of the shelves.

"Now would be a good time to call for backup, Dragon," I whispered, keeping still as the wolfdog crouched down beside me.

[Already done,] the Tinker replied, sounding miffed. [This was extremely reckless of you, Ms. Hebert! If you'd made any mistakes at all, you could've been killed!]

"I'm not out yet," I said, getting to my feet.

Keeping low to reduce my profile, I navigated the shelves of the shipping depot, slowly advancing across the space of the room. Three fourths of the way across, a sudden mist set in - obscuring the lane beyond the glassless windows, and filtering into the building. On instinct, I ducked behind a shelf and gestured with my hand, signalling for the wolfdog to wait.

At the far entrance, a masked woman in a black Gothic dress stepped into the building from out of the mist.

[Night and Fog,] said Dragon, sounding slightly panicked. [Watch out, Ms. Hebert. Don't let them find you!]


	9. Sleeping Bees

o8. **Sleeping Bees**

* * *

Though as their principal, Kayden Russel held the authority to issue them absolute orders if she so wished, under her command, Night and Fog had come to enjoy an autonomy of action so far unprecedented within their lifetime - vastly less restrictive than the schedules and mission parameters that had defined their existence as Gesellschaft operators. The extreme permissiveness of the woman's leadership style had been difficult for Night to adjust to early on - but once she'd gotten past the apparent absence of direction, she grew to comprehend that in truth, Kayden expected them to independently recognize the overarching goals of her team, and to take initiative toward their completion without prompt.

Evening patrols about the Downtown had been the plan that Night and Fog had eventually settled upon. Aside from relieving antagonists to the city's Caucasian populace of weapons and usable funds, increased exposure permitted them to build rapport with the rank and file of the Empire Eighty-Eight. Already, after several months of local activity, they were tolerated as 'external assets' to the group's chain of command, despite the fact that they were associated only via Kayden's status as a former officer. If things got dangerous for the men on the street, irrespective of allegiance, Night and Fog were now welcome to intervene at will.

It was by one such intervention that Night initially crossed paths with the cape then known as 'Virtue.'

"Have you spotted the intruder?" she asked in Deutsch, crouched upon the corner of a rooftop.

Partially reconstituting his neck and lower face in the air beside her, her partner made his report:

"Not yet."

Fog's perception in mist-form was fundamentally flawed. With a degree of discrimination inversely proportional to his dispersal, and limited by the extent to which diffusion robbed him of capacity to coordinate his spread, it was a largely 'tactile' apprehension of solid exteriors - good for open, unobstructed terrain, but not so much enclosed spaces or areas dense with complicated structures.

The streets and alleys of Brockton Bay were thankfully not so narrow that he couldn't perform basic outdoor reconnaissance.

"There's a man unconscious to the rear of the building," he continued. "He had his weapon drawn - which makes it likely he was incapacitated only after the alert came into effect."

"Possible hiding places for the hostile?"

A hand gloved in white and the forearm sleeve of a pitch black dinner jacket materialized, pointing down toward the three-story warehouse behind Hookwolf's facility.

"The buildings nearby aren't easily accessible from the ground floor," said Fog. "The shipping depot is the only structure within range that would provide ample cover for escape."

Night nodded.

"I'll check inside, then," she said.

She didn't order him to 'look away'; he'd been assigned as her support for long enough that there simply wasn't a need. With the dispersal of his face and arm, she felt his attention slip from her flesh; her limbs rapidly elongated beneath the fabric of her dress as she dove from her five-story perch, hardening at their epidermis to chitin, and segmenting like the legs of an arthropod.

On the blacktop below, she landed with a softness borne of preparation.

Fog's attention was again upon her, and her body abruptly collapsed into itself as she padded barefoot into the warehouse - an intentional reveal of her identity so as to unsettle the prey, per their usual strategy.

"Burn anything that comes out," she whispered.

Sensing the enemy's gaze momentarily, she awaited their first blink - and then /dashed/.

In her monstrous state, subjective time was slowed; a second on the clock extended to a significant fraction of a minute. Inertia, unfortunately, was unaltered - and though she was much faster than a baseline human, she moved only as quickly as the strength in her limbs could overcome her mass. Navigating the obstacles that filled the building for maybe forty seconds, she located her quarry: A tall, masked girl in grey military fatigues, crouching beside a large wolfdog.

With her hand - a mantis-like raptorial appendage that terminated in a double-edged blade - Night directed a cut to the girl's neck.

Miraculously, her opponent dodged - slowly diving aside as the blade sliced past her and cleanly bisected the shelving unit she'd been facing. Night didn't dally; before the girl could turn her gaze, she was off again - haphazardly delivering another slice to the shelf to fill the girl's line of sight with visual obstruction.

'A combat Thinker with high-speed reflexes?' Night wondered, circling out of sight, and then to the opposite end of the girl's aisle.

Arriving at her destination, she blinked her compound eyes.

The shelves had by now entirely collapsed, and she could see the dog trapped beneath the metallic frame and a mess of cardboard. The girl, however, was nowhere to be found.

'She's buried under all that trash?'

Rushing to where she'd last seen her mark, she swept her blade-hand through piles of boxes that now filled the aisle.

She wasn't rewarded with the sensation of parting flesh.

By the time she completed her swing, her arm was again human - and the edge of a knife was pressed against the tender skin of her throat.

"Yield?" asked the girl.

By way of reply, Night detached one of the stun grenades hooked to the bottom of her corset, dropping it to the girl's feet. Transformed in the moment of detonation, she delivered a forceful kick to the girl's side, launching her through the shelves in the next aisle over - and losing sight of her in the afterimage of the flash.

'Stranger power and accelerated perception,' thought Night, unsteadily trampling over the fallen debris in the rough direction the girl had flown. 'She's a bad match-up for me.'

The chitin of her leg lifted - and the skin upon the sole of her foot pressed down against the cool linoleum of the warehouse floor. The girl's attention was again upon her - and once more, Night didn't have a clue as to where she was. Biting her lower lip, she drew the automatic pistol holstered at her side, cautiously pacing forward.

Spotting a movement in the corner of her eye, she turned, squeezing off a shot.

The bullet punctured the surface of an empty cardboard box, knocking it over. Glowering, she unloaded several more rounds at random, tearing through the packaging littered about her.

'She's using her Stranger power to conceal herself,' she thought, clenching her jaw and holding her gun low. 'Either that, or she's done something to me. A Trump ability?'

"My love," said Fog, partially materializing beside her. "We should be off. Hookwolf's men have pulled out, and Armsmaster is quickly approaching."

Reluctantly, Night nodded her assent.

"This isn't over yet," she said, slowly backing away toward a nearby entrance.

* * *

When the pair finally vacated the premises, I lifted the box that I'd taken cover beneath and set it aside - clenching my jaw at the pain in my left knee.

[It's definitely dislocated,] said Dragon. [Just keep calm, and stay where you are, alright? I'll call for an ambulance.]

Disregarding her, I grasped the underside of my leg in my right hand, bending it slightly.

[Wait. What are you-]

Gripping my lower leg with the palm of my prosthetic, I applied a brief burst of strength, forcing it in the direction of my knee. There was a loud, cracking snap, and the incredible pain that shot through my leg elicited an involuntary scream -

Then, it was over. The joint was set again within its socket, and the pain was rapidly fading.

[... what?] asked Dragon. [But, that ... that was a serious injury ...]

"I'll live," I said, pushing to my feet.

With a slight limp, I made my way over to the wolfdog to check on his condition. He whimpered at my approach - but once I'd removed the heavier parts of the metallic frame pinning him to the floor, he was able to pull himself free, apparently uninjured. I supposed the cardboard boxes that covered him must've somehow cushioned the blunt impact of the shelf collapse.

"You're a lucky, lucky boy," I said, rubbing him behind the ears.

Between Night's flash-bang and the wolfdog's stunning, the marks that I'd accumulated had all but vanished. It was something to keep in mind: Both my own positional awareness and that reliant upon a 'partner's' perceptions didn't persist beyond a sharp interruption of consciousness. I still wasn't all too clear on the underlying mechanics, but somehow reestablishing my connection with the dog, I could confirm only the familiar silhouette of Armsmaster drawing near, seated upon what I assumed to be his motorcycle. The Empire thugs had evacuated during the fight, and were nowhere within range.

Limping toward the side of the building closer to Armsmaster, I exited into the evening air - looking on as he pulled up in his bike and cut the engine. As he disembarked, the wolfdog growled behind me, but seemed to calm when I gestured for him to back down.

"I gave you this assignment because it was relatively safe," said Armsmaster gruffly, walking over. "Freeing the dogs was unnecessary and dangerous. You should've just escaped when you completed your task."

I winced.

"Yeah," I said. "I know."

For a long moment, he stared at me with thinned lips, as if judging. Then, he spoke again.

"You did good, maneuvering Night and Fog into retreat," he said. "More experienced capes would have trouble doing the same." He tilted his head, looking to my left leg. "You'll want to get that leg checked out in a hospital, though."

Not wanting to seem discourteous, I nodded.

"Can I keep the dog?" I asked.

Armsmaster regarded the wolfdog, who looked back at him with thinly disguised wariness.

"I'll see if I can arrange it," he said. "But first, let's make sure he has all the necessary inoculations."

As if he understood that it might involve needles, the dog curled behind my legs and whimpered.


	10. After-Action

o9. **After-Action**

* * *

"And you performed a joint reduction by yourself, without any medical training whatsoever?" asked Panacea.

"Uh, yeah?"

She put her face into her palm.

"It's because of people like you that paramedics get so much unnecessary work."

"I don't think I did that bad of a job," I said. "Did I?"

Panacea sighed.

"You didn't," she admitted. "There wasn't any lasting damage to the ligament or the surrounding muscle. In fact, if weren't for the telltale tissue bruising, it would've been hard for me to guess that there was a dislocation in the first place." She scowled, meeting my eye. "Congratulations are in order, in other words. By sheer dumb luck, you've managed not to accidentally cripple yourself. I would advise that you don't try this ever again, because I might not be available next time for emergency after-care."

"I'll take that under advisory," I said.

It wasn't entirely truthful, but I did intend to pay more attention to safety in the future - so long as extenuating circumstances didn't require otherwise. Sometimes, risks had to be taken.

Getting Panacea'd wasn't a proper medical procedure, and since the healing was itself an off-the-books favor for the Protectorate, there wasn't any paperwork to fill out. Just a few minutes after I was done being scolded, I exited to the deserted parking lot beyond the emergency ward driveway. Armsmaster was waiting for me outside the unmarked SUV he'd commandeered from PRT headquarters. Standing on one end upon the ground beside him, there was a familiar-looking instrument box.

"It's about a quarter to seven," he said. "When did you say that your father was getting home from work?"

"He'll be back at around eight tonight," I said. "We have plenty of time."

Armsmaster nodded. Lifting the box, he handed it over to me.

"Try this on," he said.

He looked on as I set the box flat on the ground and opened the lid. As I expected, it was a new prosthetic - yellow this time, instead of red. I pressed the pneumatic release over my left bicep and removed the older arm, setting it temporarily over the lid. Holding up the new one, I slid my stump into the socket and inflated the padding - experimentally flexing the elbow and wrist once it was locked in.

"This one's lighter," I noted. "The balance feels a little different."

"I've been attempting to recreate a certain combat-use prosthetic that was only indirectly described in documents recently declassified by DARPA," said Armsmaster. "The arm that you're currently wearing is what I have to show for it."

"What do you mean 'only indirectly described?'"

"The original designer of the prosthetic that I gave you was a Soviet scientist that specialized in bionics. In 1987, DARPA managed to obtain a collection of his papers and research materials from the CIA. In his private journal, he discusses a series of modular features that he incorporated into the prosthetic arm he considered to be his magnum opus. However, there wasn't a complete blueprint included - and with the growing availability of Tinkertech at the time, the Department of Defense prematurely judged that the features were too impractical to reproduce via conventional means."

"In other words, you've done it via 'unconventional' means?" I asked, moving my fingers.

"No," stated Armsmaster, curtly enough that I wondered if I'd offended him. "Out of respect for the original, no Tinkertech was incorporated whatsoever. You'll be able to maintain it yourself without trouble."

Slowly, I nodded.

"So, what are these features that you've mentioned?"

"First, try rotating your wrist," he said, crossing his arms.

I did as ordered. When nothing happened, I looked at him quizzically.

"Three hundred and sixty degrees," he said.

"I don't think I can-"

"You can. Just picture it in your mind."

I frowned, but attempted the movement once again - imagining the turning of a wheel. To my surprise, the hand of the prosthesis was able to perform a complete revolution about its axis.

"It's been experimentally demonstrated that roughly sixty percent of amputees are capable of performing 'physically impossible' actions with the sensory representation of their phantom limbs," said Armsmaster. "This technology takes advantage of that. Try going faster."

As the angular momentum of my hand rotation picked up, sparks of electricity began to discharge from my wrist.

"The mechanics are a bit complicated to explain," Armsmaster continued, "but once you've built up enough power, touching a ground will release an electrostatic discharge of a hundred and twenty megavolts. It's enough to incapacitate a human adult non-lethally."

Carefully, I touched my hand to a nearby puddle on the blacktop. With an unexpectedly loud noise, bolts of electricity crackled from my hand. To me, it definitely didn't look like a non-lethal attack.

"Why not just directly stun an opponent with the electricity in the battery?" I asked.

"As I said, it's complicated. The electronics in your arm are optimized to carry precisely enough energy to drive actuators per nervous motor input, and to continuously harvest kinetic and solar energy for the built-in battery. The magnitude of the discharge required to knock out an adult far exceeds whatever output per period of time you'd be able to expect of the battery and circuits."

It felt like there was something vaguely off about Armsmaster's physics - but since I didn't exactly have an engineering background, I decided to let it go.

"Was there anything else you included?" I asked.

"Punch the ground."

Swinging with a bit of force, I slammed my fist into the asphalt. At the moment of impact, an odd metallic echo sounded; I wasn't sure if it was a trick of the mind or not, but centered upon the point of collision, a visible shockwave seemed to ripple outwards across the surface of the ground - racing to the horizon.

Small points of sensation impressed themselves upon the 'skin' of my phantom limb. The one that exerted the greatest amount of pressure lay in Armsmaster's direction, but an indistinct multitude lined the opposite surface of my forearm - arrayed in rows.

"This is the other feature that I've so far completed," said the Tinker. "The Active Sonar Biosensor. When the arm detects a punch of sufficient force, it conducts a sonar scan of the surrounding five hundred meters, and algorithmically recognizes any living animal within range - even through a variety of walls. Their locations relative to your body are indicated via tactile feedback, with proximity represented as pressure. Stimulus persists only for a brief duration, but adjusts in real-time based on the position of the arm."

I moved the prosthetic. Much as Armsmaster had claimed, the pressure that represented his position dynamically shifted across my 'skin' - along with the constellation of points associated with the medical personnel and the in-patients in the hospital behind me. As Active Sonar didn't directly establish marks within my consciousness, it wasn't really a perfect substitute to the strange bond I'd formed with the wolfdog - but so long as the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service was checking him for diseases and parasites, I could maybe utilize the arm as a guide for manual marking at a range.

There was just one thing that I was concerned about.

"What's with the annoying sound effect?" I asked.

"Ah," said Armsmaster. "Dragon provided that, actually - to help faithfully recreate the Active Sonar as described. Apparently, the sound effect comes from The Six Million Dollar Man - a Seventies sci-fi series about cyborgs. I've never seen it myself, but the designer of your arm was a fan."

I had the urge to make a sarcastic remark about nerds, but I didn't think Armsmaster was the sort that would properly appreciate it. Instead, I asked:

"By the way, on the drive over, you were saying that you had a safer training exercise in mind? What'd you want me to do?"

Almost imperceptibly, the edges of Armsmaster's lips curled upwards in a smile.

"Tell me," he said. "What do you know about the headquarters of the Protectorate East North-East?"

* * *

Dragon contacted him several minutes after he'd dropped off the girl at her home. Because he was driving, her communication was sound-only.

[I've finished running the figures,] she said. [Even compensating for the lesions in her brain, the patterns of CNS activation exhibited by Ms. Hebert during 'ability use' have less than a point five percent statistical similarity to the neural correlates of power modulation in two thousand parahumans.]

"It's hard to compensate for cortical reorganization."

In the circumstance that scarring or injury interrupted a well-established cortical pathway within the brain, adaptive neuroplasticity would in theory eventually result in a pathway remapping - the formation of a detour in the course of the nervous impulse, so as to avoid obstacles in the communication of a signal to its intended destination. If a person managed to regain normative functionality in the face of severe brain damage, it was only common sense that any activation patterns within their nervous system wouldn't much resemble those observed in a completely healthy individual.

[That may be the case,] said Dragon, [but it doesn't change the fact that we're unable to positively confirm whether or not she's a parahuman. And if she isn't, we're putting her at extreme risk.]

"If she isn't a parahuman, how do you explain her powers?" Colin countered, stopping at a red light. "We /have/ confirmed that she exhibits an assortment of abilities that a baseline human wouldn't be able to easily replicate."

[All of them are very weak Thinker powers,] Dragon replied. [They're closer in nature to the abilities used by the proto-parahumans and so-called psychics the Russians were researching prior to the fall of the Soviet Union.] She paused, apparently realizing that the comparison contributed negligibly to her argument. [In any case, Ms. Hebert's abilities are weak enough that it would be irresponsible of us to continue fielding her as a combatant.]

"I don't think so," said Colin. "If she were willing to utilize lethal force against Night in her run tonight, she could've eliminated her. Instead, she was calm and collected enough to decide against it - which greatly increased the difficulty of her task. Despite that, she managed to survive the encounter with minimal injuries, and elegantly maneuvered her opponent into retreat."

[She was extremely lucky, and the environment contributed to her survival. If it weren't for all the cardboard boxes in the warehouse, she could've died.]

"If it weren't for the fact that she made instinctive use of her environment, you mean," said Colin, stepping on the accelerator as the light turned green.

There was some merit to Dragon's observation that the circumstances of the fight had been tilted in Hebert's favor - but Colin was of the opinion that arguing about hypothetical what-ifs was a waste of time. So what if the fight would've gone differently in an entirely empty warehouse? Performance assessment could only be carried out with reference to events that actually occurred.

[Where do you plan on going with this?] asked Dragon.

"We'll go as far as Ms. Hebert's potential can carry her," Colin replied. "And I think she can go a long way. Certainly, she doesn't care to be a hero - but once upon a time, an individual of her capabilities would've been enough to change the world; to make it a better place. I want to teach her that."

To better protect her, he would ruthlessly exploit her powers and skills; take credit for any achievements that would reveal too much of her existence, until she no longer required his aegis or oversight.

Then, she would seek her own skies.

"When the time comes, I hope she can forgive me."

* * *

 **Notes** :

a) The 'Bionic Strength Sound Effect' from The Six Million Dollar Man was incorporated in MGSV whenever Venom Snake's prosthetic was used to perform a punching action.

b) Originally, Danny was going to appear in this snippet, but his presence ended up making things too messy.

c) About 57% of amputees really are capable of moving the somatosensory representations of their phantom limbs in impossible ways. However, the study that demonstrated this was published in 2009 - many years after Venom Snake's prosthetic was created. I assume that in the MGS universe, Soviet scientists realized this in the late 1970's.

d) Venom Snake's prosthetic arm is described as an implementation of 'myoelectric prosthesis,' but market-standard prosthetics of this type presently available to consumers are quite crude in comparison to what is demonstrated within the game. Venom Snake's arm is in fact far closer in manner of performance to the DARPA-funded Modular Prosthetic Limb - which probably qualifies as a 'robotic prosthetic' instead. As of this year, the MPL is still being developed.


	11. Oil Rig

Io. **Oil Rig**

* * *

Not far away, I could hear the waves crashing against the supports of the offshore platform.

"A lot of packages this morning," said a PRT trooper nearby. "What's inside?"

"No idea," said the helicopter pilot. "It was an urgent delivery, so I'm guessing it's equipment for the training exercise today. Armsmaster did say he wanted to change things up a bit, since the Wards won too easily the last time."

The trooper laughed weakly.

"I doubt it'll make much of a difference," he said. "Even if the Wards /are/ just kids, the BB unit has an abilities lineup that's annoying as hell to deal with." Seeming to recall something, he momentarily paused. "Speaking of changing things up, you hear about that guest cape that's supposed to be participating today?"

"Not a lot," the pilot replied. "Just that they're a rookie from the Guild branch in Vancouver, sent over by Dragon to help field-test some new Tinkertech thing. The memorandum HQ posted yesterday rated them as a Stranger 1, but there wasn't a detailed power description or anything."

"Probably has a rating in another category to supplement that," the trooper observed. "Stranger 1 sounds a bit weak, if that's all that they have."

"Strength or diversity of power doesn't got anything to do with effectiveness in combat. Miss Militia gets by with nothing more than infinite ammo and a video game weapons arsenal. Everything else is just training and reaction time."

"Yeah, but any front-liner can tell you that infinite ammo's more than enough to break the game," the trooper replied, chuckling. "In any case, I'm heading over to the commons for a quick coffee before they have us assemble. Wanna go grab a cup?"

"Nah. Need to head back. We got somebody important arriving from New York in an hour or so, and I hafta be there to pick 'em up."

"Too bad. I'll catch you later, then."

"Yeah. Good luck today."

Wheels squeaked, and there was a sensation of inertia as the cart beneath me began to move again. After a short distance, the pilot turned and stopped pushing; there was the dull whir of a metallic sliding door moving along its rail, and a final thrust by the man until the cart hit a wall.

"And that's a wrap," he said.

The sliding door closed, and when the man's footsteps had faded entirely from hearing, I pushed my way through the dovetailed lid flaps of the cardboard box - stretching a bit once I'd stepped off the cart. I'd expected the ride over to be a hassle, but the interior of the box had turned out to be comfy enough that I'd caught myself dozing off several times.

Tapping my earpiece to turn it on, I opened the door and crouched behind a nearby pillar, scanning the corridor for security cameras.

"This is Virtue," I whispered. "Do you read me, Dragon?"

At the Tinker's insistence, I'd agreed to start using the 'call sign' she'd prepared for me - an extra security measure, just in case somebody attempted to piece together my identity from overheard communications.

[Loud and clear, Virtue,] said Dragon.

"Kept you waiting, huh?" I asked. "I'm at the infiltration point."

[Everything going alright?]

"Yeah," I said, checking the watch strapped about the wrist of my prosthetic. "I'm a few minutes ahead of schedule. You want me to switch on the action-cam, or should I wait until they start up the exercise?"

[You might as well turn it on. The new one that Armsmaster gave you has a battery life of about five hours, so it shouldn't run out on us.]

Fumbling a bit with the device, I pushed the button on the back and held it down for about five seconds.

[There we go.]

I nodded as the lens auto-focused and hooked the camera back to my belt. Softly pacing, I exited the holding area to the deck outside. Here, the noise of the ocean was louder, and out across the water, Brockton Bay stretched the shoreline.

According to Mr. Gladly's World Issues class at Winslow, the headquarters of the Protectorate ENE - my current location - was formerly a semi-submersible oil rig that operated off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. In the mid-1990's, following the appearance of the Leviathan, petroleum production was unilaterally discontinued across the northern Atlantic, and the facility was sold off to the American Protectorate - relocated and repurposed as a defensive stronghold. Supposedly, the Protectorate's decision to convert an aging oil rig was inspired by an operations hub concept popularized by a certain private military company in the 1970's.

As the trooper had been informed, I was here to take part in a joint training exercise between the PRT and the Brockton Bay Wards - acting as an 'unidentified third party' infiltrating the base, albeit /with/ authorization. Typically, Wards training was conducted at PRT Headquarters over in the city, but for the purposes of today's event, the Protectorate HQ had been selected for its capacity to present a controlled environment for simulated urban combat - completely isolated from civilian traffic and the potential risk of property damage.

The complexity of the facility's architecture also permitted a realistic benchmark for the operation of the Fulton Surface-to-Air Recovery System as a viable instrument for emergency rescue within a city - the testing of which was my secondary task.

Developed originally for the CIA in the 1950's, and refined until its obsolescence in the advent of capes and Tinkertech, the Fulton Recovery System was a procedure devised to extract unresisting ground personnel to an aircraft via the use of self-inflating weather balloons. It was one among a number of 'antiquated' technologies that Armsmaster hoped to restore to conventional use, as - in his opinion - it had been abandoned without reasonable justification or rationale.

With Dragon's assistance, his particular rendition of the Fulton Recovery System had already been tested by the Canadian PRT in live field operations. The safety of the technology was proven - but to date, it had never been put to trial on American soil. Responsibility for this 'historical' undertaking had somehow been passed over to me.

To be honest, it was making me a little anxious.

[Your objective this morning is to incapacitate and extract as many opponents as possible,] said Dragon. [Try to avoid direct confrontation. Miss Militia's authorized the Wards to activate their powers at will, and the twenty-five PRT officers participating are equipped with non-lethal firearms and containment foam applicators. If either side manages to tag you with an attack, it's likely that you'll be out for the remainder of the exercise.]

"What sort of non-lethal are we talking about?" I asked. "Like, rubber bullets or something?

[Riot control munitions are a bit too dangerous for use in a conventional training exercise,] Dragon replied. [Any firearms you encounter should be loaded with short-duration tranquilizer rounds, provided courtesy of Armsmaster. A single shot is enough to render a girl of Vista's size and body mass unconscious for roughly two hours.]

"Is it just pistols, then?"

[The PRT load-out includes sniper rifles. Arms Material Type-73 Non-Lethals, if I'm not mistaken.]

Sniper rifles, hm?

Alongside my lessons in CQC, Armsmaster had taken me out to a private firing range beyond city limits for weapons training. I wasn't given an opportunity to practice with an actual sniper rifle, but I doubted the handling at range was so different from what I was used to that I wouldn't be able to apply the skills that I'd picked up. In the long run, it'd probably save me a lot of grief if I could acquire some of the gear the PRT was using,

"Has MORPHO-1 arrived yet?" I asked.

[On location and hovering at seven hundred meters,] Dragon replied. [MORPHO-2 through 5 are on standby one kilometer seaward.]

MORPHO was the model name of an airborne drone that Dragon and Armsmaster had developed for the PRT and its Canadian counterpart - an AI-controlled Tinkertech quadcopter for the emergency transport of up to twelve humans. Eight robotic arms were mounted to the base of the craft to automatically negotiate the capture and internment of Fulton extractions - equidistant from a camera-shutter hatch that permitted access to the cabin. For my excursion today, Dragon had dispatched five of the crafts to serve as my rear echelon support.

Personally, I would've preferred to bring Diamond along to help me mark opponents, but Armsmaster had vetoed the plan - saying that it'd be a logistical nightmare to sneak a dog aboard the oil rig.

Frowning the memory, I slammed my fist into the epoxy flooring of the deck, activating the active sonar.

"I'll just have to make due with this," I muttered to myself, idly noting that the PRT squad had already begun to assemble.

Spotting a clear path forward that avoided the security cams that I'd so far located, I climbed atop a ventilation system, jumping and hoisting myself over the railing of a second-level walkway. Quietly, I jogged along the length, up a staircase to the third floor - placing me immediately above the enclosure that the PRT troopers had selected as their staging area.

The squad members were in the process of moving out, but hadn't yet dispersed beyond my field of view. Quickly marking them all, I made to follow one of the men in the back - a heavy-set African-American whose rifle was mounted with a telescopic sight. With a silenced handgun drawn, he ascended the side of the building - stonily scrutinizing each balcony he passed on his way up the stairs. Ducking into a side-corridor before he reached my position, I took cover behind a fire hose cabinet - readying myself to physically engage.

[Please, Virtue,] said Dragon. [Don't do anything rash.]

The man was close enough to hear me if I replied, so I simply waited. Disappointingly, he stalked past my corridor without so much as a glance - and so I left my hiding place, silently closing the distance between us in a crouching tiptoe as I drew my weapon.

"Freeze," I said, one meter behind him - cocking my weapon to his back. "Guns on the ground."

Visibly shocked, he complied, lowering his gun to the floor, and then unstrapping his rifle and setting it down as well. Keeping my eyes to his back, I bent and picked up his handgun - stowing away my plastic water pistol and directing his own weapon to the back of his neck.

One shot was all that it took. The projectile pierced his skin - and he collapsed to his knees, falling prone.

[... you just ... you just held him up with a water pistol?] asked Dragon. [Why are you even carrying that thing?]

"I don't own any guns," I replied, strapping the man's sniper rifle over my shoulder. "And really, it's his own fault for not having any peripheral vision."

In a fireman's carry, I lifted his body - climbing a nearby flight of stairs to an open-air platform on the fourth level. Setting him down and visually confirming that his squad-mates weren't close enough to notice any strange activity, I opened my hip-pouch and drew out one of Armsmaster's compact Fulton recovery kits - a rectangular, cloth-covered package slightly larger than a typical computer mouse. Pulling the retractor belts from within and securing them about the man's waist and torso to create an approximate facsimile of a parachute harness, I knelt at a safe distance and pushed the release button on the side.

The silvery-white of the weather balloon burst from the top flap of the kit - making a noise as the latex stretched taut in abrupt inflation. Expanded, the sphere suspended in place just long enough for the red LED beacon below it to blink once. Then, with the activation of the Tinkertech heating element within, the balloon shot upwards - jerking the man to a screaming wakefulness, and rocketing out of sight.

[Alright,] said Dragon, after a moment. [Subject on-board. Leave the rest to me.]

"One down," I muttered.

* * *

There was something strange going on. Of this, Carlos was entirely certain.

"Vista. Clockblocker," he called, holding down the button on his earpiece as he hovered over the southern complex of the oil rig. "Have you located the others?"

[Not seeing anyone,] said Missy over the communicator. [I backtracked to where the ambush separated me from Kid Win. It looks like he tried shooting at the PRT guys with his laser on frost mode, because the place is covered in ice - but I couldn't find /him/ anywhere. His rifle was just lying on the floor.]

"No sign of the ambushers?"

[Like I said, there was another group that attacked me in the corridor. By the time I circled back, the ambushers were long gone.]

[The Stranger got 'em too, I bet,] Dennis muttered. [Can we, like, just surrender already or something? At this rate, we're all gonna get vanished offscreen like slasher victims in a B-rated horror flick. It's pointless and stupid, and I wanna go home.]

He might have whined on, but Miss Militia chose at this point to interrupt:

[As I explained during your briefing,] she said, [surrender isn't an option. The exercise is going to continue until two of the three teams are entirely neutralized.]

[So what if I self-eliminate, then?] asked Dennis.

[Armsmaster and Interim Director Iriomote would probably want to have a word with you,] Miss Militia replied, without a trace of humor.

[Oh, c'mon ...]

Carlos drifted forward, scrutinizing the deck below.

He'd taken to the air from the cover of the buildings only several minutes prior, when need for information had begun to outweigh the risk of getting shot up with Armsmaster's nano-tranq. Now, looking down, he wondered if his caution against snipers hadn't been entirely unfounded; amid the empty corridors of the base, there wasn't the faintest hint of movement.

In the past fifteen minutes, the frequency of gunfire had noticeably dwindled - thinning out until the sound of the waves and the cries of seagulls overhead were all that remained.

Paradoxically, the tranquility made him uncomfortable.

"There's not enough evidence to pin this on Virtue," he said, "and we can't know for sure that the PRT squad's been affected. There's a good chance they're using the exercise to field-test new equipment. Could be active camouflage, or something else that gives them invisibility."

[We totally creamed these guys last month,] said Dennis. [What's more likely? Them getting a single piece of Tinkertech that lets 'em walk all over us? Or us losing 'cause Armsy's brought in a spooky Stranger from Saskatchewan?]

Probabilities weren't so easily weighed, Carlos felt - even if he privately agreed with the gist of Dennis' assessment.

"Virtue only has a Stranger rating of one," he said. "Not enough for their 'spookiness' to independently constitute a threat." Landing on a rooftop, he looked to the oil rig's communications tower. "Anything you can tell us, Miss Militia? Any hints or whatever?"

[Sorry, but since I'm technically an active participant in today's exercise, Armsmaster felt it would be unfair to inform me of our opponents' capabilities.] Miss Militia paused. [I /can/ say that Virtue's name only began to turn up in articles online about two months ago - and only on news services local to the metropolitan area of Vancouver. Descriptions are extremely sparse and unhelpful, and beyond the police force crediting them with the arrest of minor criminals, they might as well not exist.]

[Hope it isn't too much to ask, Miss Militia,] said Missy, [but, uh ... Have you been able to spot them at all through your scope?]

[No, not yet. The Tinkertech that Armsmaster was having them test, though-]

The crack of a gunshot rang out - echoing from somewhere in the east. Eyes wide, Carlos turned in the rough direction of the noise, but couldn't determine the point of origin.

"Everyone alright?" he asked.

[I- I'm fine,] said Dennis. [I think ... I think that was nearby.]

"Vista?"

There wasn't any response.

[I had her in my sights just a few minutes ago,] said Miss Militia. [Eastern sector, in the north of the R&D complex. There's a balcony on the third level.]

[I'm heading over!] said Dennis.

"I'll meet you there," said Carlos.

Leaping from his ledge, he directed the momentum of his fall into a gliding motion.

The eastern bloc was a complicated structure - a densely-built aggregation of laboratories interspersed by narrow fire alleys, sheet-metal ventilation, and steel grating. Arriving at the balcony Miss Militia had indicated, Carlos realized he'd have to navigate the maze-like gaps between the buildings from 'within'; visibility was too poor to see anything from the exterior.

[The hell?] Dennis muttered.

"What is it?" asked Carlos. "Did something happen?"

[Uhh ... a cardboard box just moved by itself.]

[A cardboard box?] asked Miss Militia.

Carlos sighed. It really wasn't the time for silliness.

"Knock it off," he said. "Focus on finding Vista."

[But it's the truth!] Dennis replied. [Shit, it moved again!]

"I said, knock it off."

[I'm serious! I can see feet sticking out from the bottom!]

It didn't seem as if Dennis was trying to make a joke, but paranoia was a far more probable explanation than somebody actually sneaking around in a cardboard box. In the interests of efficiency, though, it was better just to quell his doubts.

"Fine," said Carlos. "Go on and investigate, then."

[I'm on it!]

Carlos rolled his eyes and continued to fly along the air duct behind the balcony. He'd reached an intersection in the fire alley when Dennis spoke again.

[Wait ... Vista? Wha-]

The communicator cut out, and somewhere in hearing range, there was a loud electrical discharge. After a moment of silence, Carlos heard a blunted 'pop,' and the sound of Dennis screaming - trailing away, as if vanishing into a far distance.

He cursed under his breath, accelerating in the direction of the noise. Reaching an enclosure on the fourth level, he found Missy sprawled unconscious upon a partially collapsed cardboard box. Warily, he touched down at her side, staying on guard in case the enemy attacked again.

'Virtue's got a Mover power of some sort,' he thought. 'He's been using it to teleport people off the base ...'

A soft metallic 'ping' drew his attention, and he turned - eyeing the blank stretch of wall at his right. For all of a second, he was confused - and then he was abruptly certain he'd made a mistake; from the balcony above, a fluid mass splattered across the side of his helmet and torso, quickly solidifying into a spongy solid.

"Target neutralized," said a girl's voice.

* * *

It took awhile for Aegis to stop struggling. Several times, I thought he would break free of the foam - but much as advertised, it kept him firmly stuck to the floor. It was a good thing that it worked; I wasn't sure if the bullets in my pistol could even knock him out.

"What do I do with Vista?" I asked. "Just let her sleep?"

[Yeah,] Dragon replied. [We haven't fine-tuned the extraction package enough to safely transport a child of her size. For now, just head back to the helipad. I'll send MORPHO-4 to pick you up.]

"Got it."

I left Aegis and Vista where they were, descending to deck level and doubling back to the western sector of the oil rig. Probably, I allowed myself to relax a little too much - investing excessively in the assumption that I'd neutralized all opponents afield. Come the sudden awareness of 'attention' that struck me halfway across a vehicular passage, I was almost entirely unprepared.

I recovered enough to respond at barely the last moment - diving for cover behind a transformer cabinet just as a tranquilizer round struck the floor beside me.

[Sniper!] said Dragon. [She's participating?]

"Who is it?" I asked, pulling into a crouch.

[Miss Militia,] Dragon replied, sounding somewhat irked. [For today's exercise, she was assigned as an overseer to the Wards. Armsmaster didn't mention she'd be taking part as a combatant.]

Under my balaclava, I bit my lip. Miss Militia had the advantage of me; she'd identified my precise location.

Much as in the case of 'presence,' my recently-discovered awareness of 'attention' wasn't anything specific - merely a heightened sense of pressure that came of being a subject of focus, starkly noticeable only if manifest in the absence of nearby individuals. A point of origin was represented as a general bearing, but per the situation with active sonar, actually marking the source required a manual effort.

Leaning, I peeked about the side of the cabinet. As a reward for my effort, another round of fire narrowly missed my face.

"She's in the tower at the center of the base," I said, pulling back.

[The communications tower?] asked Dragon. [Near the top, she would have a panoramic view of the entire oil rig. It's a classic sniper's position - and at this distance, you can pretty much only engage her with your rifle.]

Right. That didn't sound so hard.

There was just the tiny problem of her being a professional hero with years of experience, specialized in firearms. If I couldn't mark her, I didn't stand a chance. The fact that she had unlimited ammo didn't even need to enter the equation.

I studied my surroundings. The passageway that Miss Militia had cornered me within was far too wide; aside from the cabinet that I'd claimed, any cover available could be reached only by running out into the open.

"Nowhere to hide ..."

Or maybe not.

Careful to remain within the silhouette of the cabinet, I crept forward, pulling experimentally at the grate of a drain gully that crossed the width of the passage. There was a bit of weight to the metal, but surprisingly, it gave.

"Can you do me a favor, Dragon?" I asked. "I need you to distract Miss Militia for just a moment ..."


	12. (Reunion) The Patriot

II. [ **Reunion** ] **The Patriot**

* * *

Behind her scarf, Hannah exhaled.

The thermal imaging binoculars that she'd brought along for the exercise incorporated environmental compensation for use during daytime hours - but being standard-issue gear for the PRT, its performance was predictably cut short by the usual bureaucratic budget skimp; the infrared component of sunlight was for the better part uncorrected.

For purposes of quickly situating enemy movement across a wide, deserted expanse, however, the optics were more than sufficient to Hannah's needs.

'Found you,' she thought.

The fire alleys of the R&D bloc contained precisely six exits at deck-level. Less than a minute after the Wards' elimination, the slender figure of a girl in olive drab emerged from the passage closest in proximity to the position of Clockblocker's Fulton extraction. Likely because she was unaware of Hannah's presence, she made no further effort to conceal herself.

Lowering the binoculars from her eyes, Hannah flipped up the cover of her rifle scope and switched over - tracking her crosshair to Virtue's westward advance.

If her goal were to neutralize the girl, there were plenty of opportunities to line up a headshot - but quick elimination would've defeated the purpose she sought in involving herself as an active combatant. Sitting before her was an answer, and if not now - if not under the highly improbable circumstances that had this morning played out before her - she didn't know when she would again be permitted to pose her question. Thus, with a strange mixture of patience and agitation, she bided her time - waiting for Virtue to place herself in an inescapable quandary.

To Hannah, bullets were fundamentally a medium of communication.

For all that they existed as a byproduct of civilization and modernity, they provided in cold metal a physical tangibility to the primal-most elements of the human condition - the ego infantile, which loved and hated and crushed without remorse. By firearms, intent could be articulated only with a crude, ineloquent finality - but the salvation of entire peoples had once been penned in gunfire even so.

Tragedies were not all that could be writ. The nano-tranq injector chambered now within Hannah's MSG90 was nothing less than an invitation - an appeal to candidly converse.

"Tell me," she said, taking aim. "How are you connected to Saladin?"

* * *

 _The first time they met, she was nine years old - detained within an airbase interrogation room somewhere in northeastern Syria._

 _"I apologize, sir," said the soldier posted at her door, speaking in Arabic. "I'm not authorized to permit entry to off-base personn-"_

 _"Again, my orders are from on high," replied an older man, cutting him off. "If you want, you can confirm it with your superiors. Tell them that Lieutenant Colonel Siam of the Sixty-Fifth Armored Brigade is here to collect the girl."_

 _Sighing, the soldier replied, "I understand. If you'll just wait here for one moment-"_

 _"Radio it in."_

 _"Again, I'm very sorry, but we've been having technical issues with communications for the past hour. Please, just be patient. I'll be back shortly."_

 _When the soldier's footsteps had vanished into the distance, a series of metallic noises issued from the lock - concluding with a loud, satisfying click. The door opened, revealing an eye-patched middle-aged man in a military uniform._

 _Beckoning with his left hand, he spoke in an unaccented Kurmanji Kurdish:_

 _"Quickly now, before they realize that I'm not one of them."_

 _There was no reason for Hana to trust him - but meeting the piercing blue of his good eye, she felt like taking her chances. Unlike the other adults, he didn't look at her as if she were a particularly dangerous breed of dog._

 _Without words, he led her to the stairwell, down to the landing above the ground floor. Opening the window, he climbed out, falling to the lid of the dumpster directly underneath._

 _"Come on," he said, looking up to her. "I'll catch you."_

 _She nodded, stepping up on to the window sill and dropping over the edge, into his waiting arms. Gently, he set her on her feet and leapt to the pavement below, gesturing for her to follow. At a jog - unhurried enough that she could keep pace - they made a beeline to the far end of the building's loading zone, where he shot a quick thumbs-up to the uniformed driver of a military transport. The driver responded in kind, revving up his engine as the one-eyed man boarded the rear of the canvas-covered trailer - helping her up with his left hand._

 _Once the vehicle was moving, he handed her an empty cardboard box._

 _"Sit down and hold this over your body," he said. "We'll be hiding among the packages."_

 _Hana stared; her power, which had taken the form of a soldier's knife, shifted into a small hand pistol._

 _"That won't work," she said, flatly. "Not even the little ones from my village would fall for that."_

 _"Just trust me," he said. "I'm a professional."_

 _Recalling that the check-point of the airbase was near, and not wanting to further argue, she accepted the 'disguise' and complied. Once she was settled in, the man proceeded to unfold a second box - crouching down beside her and concealing himself._

 _Passing over a row of speed-bumps, the truck slowed and drew to a stop._

 _"Deliveries?" asked the faint voice of guard in Arabic. "Where are you headed?"_

 _"Al-Hasakah," the truck driver replied. "Packages post-marked for headquarters."_

 _"I'll need to inspect your cargo."_

 _"Certainly."_

 _The guard paced to the rear, and Hana shifted her weapon back into a knife - holding her breath and keeping her body very still as he lifted the end curtain of the cargo cover. Seconds passed - and after what felt like an eternity, the soldier allowed the curtain to fall._

 _"Looks like everything's in order," he said. "Drive safe."_

 _"Thank you," said the truck driver._

 _The truck began to move again - and after several minutes, the one-eyed man emerged from his box, folding it and setting it aside._

 _"It's alright now," he said, standing up. "You can come out."_

 _At his prompt, Hana lifted the box away, setting it atop the real packages as the man moved to the rear of the trailer. He seated himself on the passenger bench along the right, drawing a device from his belt that resembled the cassette player one of the teachers from her village had owned. Plugging in an earphone, he held down a button and began to speak in a foreign language - conversing with somebody over radio, Hana assumed._

 _It wasn't a very long conversation - only a few quick exchanges before the man stowed the device to his belt again. Seeing that she'd sat down opposite of him in the meantime, he smiled at her awkwardly._

 _"Sorry about that," he said. "Business. My colleagues weren't expecting me to bring along a guest, so I had to clear it with them."_

 _"You ... you didn't come for me? For my power?"_

 _The man chuckled._

 _"Trust me, kid," he said. "Anyone can use a gun or a knife. Having whatever weapon you want all of the time isn't exactly what I would consider a super-power."_

 _Slowly, Hana nodded; her power settled into the comfortable form of a revolver. From the point of view of a soldier or mercenary - or whatever it was that the man did for a living - she supposed that 'having weapons' wasn't a big deal._

 _"You're a foreigner," she said, recalling the doctor who had helped to evacuate the other children from her village overseas. "From Britain?"_

 _"As long as people keep drawing lines in the sand, everyone's a foreigner somewhere," said the man, pulling a cigar and a Zippo lighter from a pouch in his uniform. "But no, I'm not from Britain. I'm don't really have place to call home anymore."_

 _"Where are we going, then?"_

 _"South, to a village called Tell Brak. Saltash - the aerial transport assigned to pick us up - will be flying west to Al-Ladhiqiyah, on the Mediterranean shore. From there, I'll try to arrange transportation to America, but we might have to make a stop somewhere else first." The man paused, holding his cigar between his lips. "You don't mind if I smoke, do you?"_

 _Hana shook her head, and the man flipped open the lighter, striking up a flame._

 _"We'll be stopping in ... Cyprus?" she asked, trying to remember her geography lessons._

 _The man finished lighting his cigar, and put away his Zippo. Taking a long draw, he exhaled away from her face._

 _"Cyprus isn't a bad place for a holiday, but I'm not too keen on visiting again," he said, gazing through the plastic window on the rear curtain. "We won't be going there."_

 _"Then ..."_

 _He met her eyes and smiled - but Hana got the impression that he was burdened with something; or that he was apologizing to her._

 _"Probably," he said, "we'll be visiting a place just outside of Heaven."_

* * *

Upon the brushed metal surfaces of the Tinkertech aircraft that had descended before the communications tower, the emblem of the International Red Cross was prominently emblazoned.

'Dragon's actively participating, then,' thought Hannah, frowning as she shielded her eyes from the wind.

There was no knowing if the quadcopter's onboard sensors were good enough to compromise her position, but it was better to be safe than sorry; abandoning the landing of the staircase where she'd set up camp, she retreated to the interior of the building.

'Virtue should be relocating out of sight,' she thought, running along an intentionally unlit corridor. 'As soon as she's confident of her safety, she'll go for counter-sniper tactics.'

From solitary infiltration; to the stealth take-down of active patrols; to the liberal use of Fulton recovery and the idiotic cardboard box gimmick - Virtue's methods were distinctly familiar to Hannah. She had, after all, dedicated hundreds of hours to their virtual modelling in her time within the armed forces.

Calling in air support to interrupt a sniper's line of fire was, in the context of conventional military logistics, an exceptionally impractical procedure - especially if performed on behalf of a lone combatant. In the first place, pursuit of combat objectives via the solo insertion of ground personnel simply wasn't done, even among the parahuman units of the special forces. Stunts like this were the domain of a certain breed of elite covert operatives - and the tactics that Virtue had employed were, in particular, highly reminiscent of the hallmarks favored by the legendary soldier known as Big Boss - the man acquainted with her in her adolescence under the pseudonym of 'John South.'

She'd never really known him, in the end.

Despite his close friendship to her adoptive father and his frequent visits with her family, she'd associated with him almost entirely in his persona as a 'private individual.' It wasn't until adulthood that she came to appreciate how fragmentary her knowledge of him truly was - even though she'd held him up as a personal hero.

By then, he was already beyond her reach - a traitor to the country, and a martyr for a cause she couldn't begin to comprehend. All that he'd left for her were questions.

This was the reason she'd chosen to confront Virtue.

'Quadcopter's pulling away,' Hannah noted, listening from behind an archway as the aircraft's engine noise faded into the sky.

Dropping prone once she was certain it was out of range, she high-crawled to the edge of the roof-side walkway. Through the gap that separated the floor from the metal panels of the safety railing, she again scanned the vicinity of the southern bloc via thermal imaging.

Four consecutive sweeps concluded without payoff, and she set her binoculars to the floor temporarily - shifting her M1911A1 back into an MSG90, and reattaching its nano-tranq magazine.

'Either she's playing a waiting game, or she's found some way to escape behind cover.'

Neither guess was on the mark - but Hannah didn't know it until ten seconds later, when a shadow crossed her face from above. Glancing upwards just in time to catch sight of a parachute burning away, she found herself directly in the path of a cardboard box in freefall.

Quick reflexes managed to save her, and she rolled aside right as the box smashed into the floor - spilling cross-emblazoned packages all over the walkway. Before she could get up and evacuate her position, however, she was abruptly struck with a stinging sensation:

Upon her left arm, the needle injector of a nano-tranq bullet had punctured the fabric of her sleeve ...

* * *

 _Mid-March, 1995: The Outer Heaven Uprising._

 _To most Americans, it was just another headline on the news; an armed intervention staged by NATO in a small third-world dictatorship, halfway around the planet. Being hardly omnipresent, Scion hadn't intervened - and in the aftermath, when he'd finally appeared in the region, the dust had already settled._

 _At the time, Hannah was unaware that anything at all had occurred._

 _Coming home for Spring Break from her fourth term at the Point, she was informed by the live-in nurse that her mother had again collapsed earlier in the day, and that her father was unreachable - called away the previous evening to attend an unspecified emergency at the Pentagon._

 _As soon as she was able, she went to check upon her mother's condition; found her recovering in bed, putting on a strong front as usual. When asked how she was doing at academy, Hannah humored the woman, telling her of the Rifle Team's performance at the NCAA Championship the past week; and of the introductory computer science course she'd audited in preparation for the coming term._

 _They spoke until nearly six. Then, leaving her mother to her rest, Hannah went to take her supper. It wasn't till an hour and a half later that her father arrived at home - anxious, snippy, and very clearly operating on caffeine alone._

 _Lacking the faculty to properly greet her until the nurse had assured him that his wife was merely resting, he apologized to Hannah for his poor disposition, and retired to his study without a meal. She didn't begrudge him his privacy; it was obvious that /something/ had happened, and that it had shaken him deeply._

 _While waiting for her Amtrak transfer in New York City, Hannah had picked up a paperback by Nicholas Monsarrat. Lacking anything to occupy the long evening ahead of her, she now fetched it from her backpack - curling up before the fireplace in the living room and flipping open to the prologue._

 _'This is the story,' she read, 'of one ocean, and two ships ...'_

 _At a quarter after nine, there was an knocking at the front entrance. Thinking it odd, she left the warmth of the sofa and proceeded into the foyer, pressing her eye to the peephole. On the other side, the familiar figure of a middle-aged one-eyed man stood upon the doorstep - expression cast in solemn reserve._

 _Unbolting the door, she opened it._

 _"Uncle John?" she asked._

 _"Evening, Hannah," he greeted. "Is your father in?"_

 _Before she could answer, a voice spoke out from behind her:_

 _"You've got a lot of nerve, showing your face here, John."_

 _She turned; in the time that she'd answered the door, her father had descended to the base of the stairs, and was now glaring at John with a raw hostility she'd never seen in him._

 _"Father?" she asked._

 _"Hannah," he said, more composed than he'd been on returning home. "To your room, now. That's an order."_

 _Though she worried that things could get physical, her father's tone brooked no argument, and she obeyed - climbing to the second floor with her eyes fixed on the men below. Within the custom sheathe strapped to her belt, her birth-mother's ornamental knife had reconfigured into a Beretta 92FS, converted for standard tranquilizer rounds._

 _In her room, she set her novel face-down on her desk and pulled the dust cover from her bed, folding it and draping it over her chair. Invoking the habit she'd developed to fit in at the cadet barracks, she laid on the mattress with her eyes open, simply to wait - straining her ears to catch the muffled conversation downstairs._

 _There wasn't much she could actually make out, but she was fine with that; the subject matter was probably far beyond her security clearance, given her father's attitude. Instead, she kept track of the general tone of discussion, poising herself to rush to the first floor at a moment's notice. She didn't truly think either of the men would resort to violence - but given the irregularity of the situation, it wasn't something she would bet on._

 _The worst-case scenario didn't come to pass._

 _Just after midnight, an animal howled in the distance, and heavy, plodding footsteps ascended the stairs - followed by the slamming of the oak door to her father's study. When all was quiet, Hannah got up and exited her room - softly padding down to the foyer._

 _Alone in the living room, John was seated in a leather armchair that faced the fire._

 _"You're still awake," he said, hearing her approach, but not turning to face her._

 _It was a statement rather than a question - rhetorical and without meaning. He was aware that sleep wasn't necessary for her, and that it hadn't been since her night in the forest, ten years ago. Still, because he apparently desired to speak, she nodded in reply._

 _"It's best if you don't ask about what happened here tonight," he continued. "There's not much that I can tell you, truthfully - and the less you know, the better."_

 _"Are you alright?"_

 _He leaned forward, supporting his elbows upon his knees._

 _"I hear you're in the military now," he said, ignoring her question._

 _"Army Cadet Third Class," Hannah replied. "I'm a yearling at the Point."_

 _"What happened to being a superhero?"_

 _Hannah seated herself in the armchair adjacent, looking to the reflection of the flames in the polished wooden floor. It didn't sound as if he were criticizing her, or being particularly judgmental. Rather, he simply wanted to know._

 _"When I graduated from the Wards program," she said, "they wanted me to join up with the Protectorate as 'Arsenal.' I didn't feel as if I could live up to a name like that."_

 _"Why not?"_

 _"Because anyone can use a gun or a knife," she replied. "You told me that, years ago. If there's one thing that I've understood in my time as a Ward, it's that possession of a weapon alone doesn't qualify me as a superhero. It's not enough to make a difference."_

 _"And joining the army is?"_

 _Enrollment as an army cadet had provided her with the discipline that she sorely lacked - the mental fortitude to perform under pressure; the leadership skills to properly coordinate a group; the technical and professional capability to function as an officer in a paramilitary organization. Two years ago, her incompetence and indecisiveness had nearly resulted in the death of one of her teammates. There wouldn't be a repeat performance._

 _"No," she said. "But it does give me a bit more to work with."_

 _Lowering his gaze, John pressed a palm against his forehead._

 _"I brought you here to give you a chance at a real life," he said. "Wasn't supposed to be from behind a gun."_

 _"I don't think I could've avoided it in the first place," said Hannah. "War is something that I can't abide by - but a power like mine destines me for combat one way or another. Given a choice to join the battle on my own terms, I wanted to follow in your footsteps - to fight for the same reasons that you do."_

 _"Why do you think I fight?"_

 _"Father always said that your abilities as a soldier are unparalleled. The average person wouldn't be able to match them, even if they worked at it their entire lives. Because of that, I think you feel obligated to do what others can't - to save people that nobody else can help. You brought me out of that hell a decade ago even though you didn't need to, and couldn't benefit in any way. I want to be able to do the same for others."_

 _John wiped his hand back across his scalp._

 _"You become a soldier," he said, "and inevitably, something's taken away from you. You don't notice it until it's gone, and by then it's far too late."_

 _"I'm not an innocent," said Hannah. "I've had blood on my hands since before I met you."_

 _"And I'm not talking about innocence," John replied, shaking his head. "It's nothing so straightforward."_

 _"What do you mean, then?"_

 _"Once upon a time, with the best of intentions, I set out to save the world from itself," he said. "But somewhere along the way, 'obligation' became an excuse for 'necessity.' Even if it would cost the lives of those who pledged themselves to me, I've acted per the demands of the greater good - too blinded by hubris and efficiency to seek out an alternative."_

 _Hannah frowned, unsure as to how to respond._

 _"I've lied," said John. "I've betrayed the trust of good men like your father. Only yesterday, I sent a close friend to die in my place - and I'm even now justifying his death in context of the duties that I've yet to fulfill." He paused. "Sometimes I just wonder what it's all for."_

 _For a time, they merely sat, gazing into the flames and listening as the wood crackled within. Separated by a gulf of age and experience, it was almost as if they lacked a common tongue - and so no words were exchanged; no mutual understanding._

 _Eventually, John stood._

 _"If you need to fight, I would rather that you do it for your own sake," he said, turning to the foyer. "Not for nation, not for government, and not for me."_

 _Hannah got to her feet, trailing after him as he paced._

 _"You're a hero, Uncle John," she called. "If your men were willing to fight for you and put their lives on the line, it's because you've granted them deliverance." No conscious choice was made to switch over, but her next words somehow emerged in Kurdish: "To me, you were always Saladin."_

 _Opening the front door, John glanced back at her, sadly smiling._

 _"I'm no hero," he said. "No Saladin. In the end, I'm just another man with a gun."_

 _Leaving the door ajar, he paced off into the night - vanishing amidst the shadows of the trees._

 _It was the last time that Hannah ever met him. She was nineteen years old._

* * *

She wasn't certain how long it had been. Seconds? Minutes?

"Kawanishi-Noseguchi," she recited, concentrating on the pronunciation of the syllables. "Kinunobebashi ... Takiyama ... Uguisunomori ... Tsuzumigataki ... Tada, Hirano, Ichinotorii ... Uneno, Yamashita ... Sasabe, Kofudai ... Tokiwadai, Myoukenguchi."

With a grunt and a mental marshaling of focus, Hannah pulled herself to her feet, holding the safety railing.

A lack of need for sleep didn't wholly counteract the effect of Armsmaster's nano-tranq. The dosage carried within the standard 7.62 x 51 mm injector cartridge was, for Hannah, sufficient to induce brief periods of unconsciousness or disorientation. With maybe five or six more rounds, the nanites would reach blood saturation, and she would be incapacitated like anyone else.

'Virtue isn't shooting anymore,' she observed, pulling the injector from her arm and looking over the ledge. 'Maybe she thinks I'm unconscious?'

If that were the case, the girl was likely ascending the tower to perform a Fulton extraction. Aside from Aegis and Vista, all members of the Wards BB and the participating PRT squad had thus far been removed from the oil rig via balloon. Hannah didn't have a theory to explain the two exceptions, but there was no reason to presume that Virtue would drop her established mode of operation against a final opponent.

'Might be able to ambush her, depending on where she is ...'

Her weapon, which had shifted to the comfortable form of an M9 in her bout of unconsciousness, was loaded up with standard tranquilizer rounds. Materializing a silencer and vanishing the magazine as she entered the building, she replaced the latter with the spare of 9 mm nano-tranqs that she kept within her combat harness. It restricted her to fifteen rounds of fire, but the Tinkertech ammunition was in any case far more effective than conventional soporifics.

At the top of the staircase, she paused; there was a faint mechanical noise from the corridor below, as if somebody were reloading a weapon.

'She's already here?' thought Hannah.

Cocking her gun, she crept down the steps, turning right on the lower passageway in the direction of the noise. Beside a fire extinguisher, there was an out-of-place cardboard box against the wall, and Hannah narrowed her eyes - unloading a round of fire through the side without verbal warning.

No response.

She approached, kicking the box over with her foot; and widening her eyes at the realization that there wasn't anyone underneath. Alarmed, she spun in the opposite direction - just in time to catch a 9 mm nano-tranq to the thigh.

"That won't work on me," she said, pulling the needle from her muscle as she glared at the girl standing down the hall. "I've had drug-resistance training."

It was half-way a bluff, but Virtue didn't need to know that.

Before the girl could react, Hannah had rushed her guard - taking note that her weapon was a PRT-standard Windurger No.2; a handgun similar in construction to an AMC Auto Mag. Moving to the right of Virtue's body, Hannah pushed the gun's cocking piece backwards along its frame - pistol-whipping the girl in the throat, and using the momentum of her fall to undo the barrel latch. The slider came free, and Hannah tossed it aside, effectively neutralizing the firearm.

To Virtue's credit, the sudden disassembly of her weapon didn't cause her to freeze up. It was obvious she'd received a good amount of training in CQC - but she wasn't quite proficient enough to counter a non-standard style. Nearly breaking away from Hannah's second offensive, an attempt to deliver a punch with her Tinkertech prosthetic landed her in a single-winged strangle. The girl's bionic hand - possibly damaged - began to rotate uncontrollably in its wrist socket.

"Either you were trained by Big Boss," said Hannah, "or somebody wanted you to mimic his capabilities."

"Never heard of any 'Big Boss,'" said the girl, struggling. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Hannah frowned. Virtue was younger than she'd imagined. Up close, the eye-patch the girl was wearing under her balaclava was clearly visible. Was it necessary to imitate Uncle John so faithfully?

"I know that Big Boss didn't die at Outer Heaven sixteen years ago," said Hannah. "Tell me - what's your relationship with him? Where is he?"

"I told you, I've never heard of him!"

Too late, she noticed the static discharge sparking from the girl's prosthetic. The hand tapped down on an exposed part her forearm - and the pain of electrocution tore through her flesh. With Virtue in tow, Hannah collapsed to the floor, but couldn't recover in time to keep the girl from pulling free.

When the stars had cleared from her vision, she was looking up into the barrel of an Arms Material Type-73.

"Wh- who are you, then?" she asked.

"My name is Virtue," the girl replied, fingering her trigger. "My path is my own."

* * *

 **Notes** :

a) This is the last full-length snippet. All that remains are the epilogues, which will be much shorter.  
b) Again, this isn't a fic about Taylor triggering with an alternate power.  
c) I considered having Miss Militia's original cape name as 'Arsenal Wolf,' but since Brockton Bay already has a Hookwolf, it just became 'Arsenal.'


	13. Epilogue I: The Philosophers

I2. **Epilogue I** : **Philosophers**

* * *

It was a board room that wouldn't have been out of place in any multinational company - unexceptional aside from its location; it occupied the top floor of a building that existed nowhere within the world, surrounded on all sides by endless virgin wilds.

Above the circular table in the center of the room, there was a holographic display of a seaside city.

"This is Port Victoria, in Seychelles," said a dark-skinned woman in the lab coat, speaking with a slight accent. "Population 26,450, as of a 2010 census."

The display changed: A wire-frame representation of the Earth and its land masses slowly rotated.

Over the surface, a point of light traveled, leaving a gradually fading path of roughly circular revolutions around the planet. As it crossed northwards through eastern Europe for the second time, its direction abruptly changed - subsequently trailing in a line of solid red.

"On January eleventh, the Simurgh diverged sharply from its anticipated path," the woman continued. "Dragon's predictive algorithm previously gave that it would make landfall in Australia sometime in late February, targeting either Sydney or Canberra. This forecast was independently confirmed by PRT and Protectorate Thinkers, and matched the projections modeled by the Trismegistos."

The display shifted again, focusing into the western reach of the Indian Ocean.

"Following the divergence, the only major population center that fell within a 0.01% allowance of the Simurgh's anticipated course was Port Victoria."

"A city of a bit more than twenty-six thousand isn't a real population center," commented a hooded figure, seated on the opposite side of the table. "And in any case, there wasn't an attack there. Why are you telling us about an incident that never happened?"

The woman in the lab coat didn't regard the hooded man. Impassively, she clicked her wireless mouse, and several new windows opened in the holographic flat-screen immediately before her seat.

"I called this meeting today," she said, calmly, "to provide you with a general background on the so-called 'Fourth Endbringer.' The pertinence of this information should be obvious momentarily."

"In that case, proceed," said another woman - well-built, and clad in a cape and skintight suit.

The first woman nodded.

"On the eighth of March," she said, "the Simurgh's advance temporarily halted three hundred and twenty-four kilometers southwest of Port Victoria, in an area of open ocean. For roughly twenty hours, it remained geostationary in the upper atmosphere. Seven hours into its vigil, seismic stations in the region registered a minor undersea earthquake - a two on the Modified Mercalli scale."

"And the 'giant in the skies' was first sighted off the coast of Madagascar on March tenth ..." said the hooded man, trailing off. "You're saying that the Simurgh bore witness to the creation of the Fourth?"

"As we've previously established, the Fourth is capable of cloaking itself from long-range optical and radio surveillance. Ergo, the precise time of its origination isn't presently confirmable - but to answer your question, there's a high probability that it's a man-made construct merely 'appropriated' by the Simurgh."

"A Tinkertech weapon?"

"No. Or at least, not originally."

At the center of the table, three axes extended perpendicularly from a point, forming a cubic space graduated with dotted grid-lines. Within, a blurry shape scanned into existence.

"On the twelfth of May - thirty hours ago - a research vessel in the southern Pacific recorded the displayed atmospheric bogey via synthetic-aperture acoustic imaging. We've managed to digitally enhance the read-out."

A plane of light moved across the blur, adding definition to its shape. After several passes, a humanoid form with sharp, mechanical lines emerged. Per the scale of the grid, the actual figure would've been roughly fifteen meters tall - larger than the Behemoth.

"... Metal Gear!?" said the man.

The lips of the caped woman drew into a frown.

"You've suppressed the release of this information to the PRT, I'm supposing?" she asked.

"Correct," the woman in the lab coat replied. "We've permitted rumors to circulate online, but filter bubble isolation has been enacted to restrict the dissemination of accurate knowledge - effective at least until media coverage exceeds critical volume. Ironically, the stealth measures the Fourth itself employs have been of substantial aid to our efforts. What you see before you is the sole recording of its outward appearance so far extant."

"When it inevitably makes its debut, how do you intend to respond?" asked the caped woman. "Any way I look at it, the mere existence of this thing reverses over a decade of ideological regulation. The public isn't blind enough not to notice what it looks like - and dependent upon the sort of threat that it poses, it might be taken as evidence toward the viability of the Metal Gear as a countermeasure against parahumans."

"The current plan is to sell the Fourth as a unique Tinkertech creation. Thirty-five of the Marine Corps' brand new Mass-Production Model RAY Mk. II's are on standby for rapid deployment in the event of an attack on American soil. If it's demonstrated that a supposedly state-of-the-art weapon isn't a match against the Simurgh's toy soldier, comparability or equivalence to a conventional Metal Gear shouldn't be as readily assumed."

"In other words, we're running a repeat of Manhattan, 2009?" asked the man. "We'll really need to stage an exhibition of the Mk. II's performance beforehand ..."

"The Trismegistos has already begun to make arrangements. Several expendable A-Rank assets are being considered for elimination, and we've taken great pains to avoid another Romanenko situation."

The hooded man shifted in his seat, crossing his arms before his chest.

"What I want to know is, who built this thing?" he asked. "It isn't one of ours, is it?"

"About that," said the woman in the lab coat. "Contessa's been looking into it."

The central display cleared, and a flat image loaded - the photograph of a humanoid silhouette drifting above a savanna, discolored to a dark blue by distance and aerial perspective.

"Thought you said there weren't any other images," said the man.

"You misunderstand. This was taken near Lake Natron in Arusha, Tanzania in 1985."

"Four years prior to the end of the Cold War," the caped woman observed. "And you said the Simurgh might have 'appropriated' the weapon from the territorial waters of Seychelles. Any connection with the defunct Diamond Dogs PMC?"

The woman in the lab coat shook her head.

"We initially hypothesized that there might've been a link," she replied, clicking her mouse. A top-down satellite image of a sprawling off-shore facility appeared in the central display. "The approximate coordinates to the PMC's former base of operations does indeed overlap with the Simurgh's position as of March eighth. Digging into it a bit more, however, we uncovered partial documentation of a weapons development project that the XOF completed on Soviet funds in the mid-1980's."

The hologram switched, tracing out the three-dimensional schematic of a humanoid Metal Gear in wire-frame.

"This was an early design for the ST-84 Sahelanthropus," the woman continued, "a plan prepared by the XOF Commander code-named Albatross, prior to his death in 1984. You would know of him better as 'the Transylvanian' - the man responsible for the downfall of Zero."

"Sahelanthropus," the caped woman carefully pronounced. "The Man of Sahel." She narrowed her eyes. "It seems that we aren't quite through with the phantoms that Cipher's left behind."

* * *

 **Notes** :

a) David is not Solid Snake, and is not genetically related to Big Boss.

b) Leviathan attacked Manhattan in 2009. Twenty Metal Gear RAYs were deployed to fight it, but over half of them were wrecked.

c) The nanomaterial coating applied by the Simurgh to the surfaces of the Sahelanthropus serve as active camouflage via counter-illumination and the real-time modulation of light and radio-wave reflection. Certain other capabilities exhibited by 'the one that covers' are mimicked.

d) Nastasha Romanenko was assassinated in 2006.

e) The primary servers of the Trismegistos are situated on alternate Earths, and connect to the internet via redundant iterations of the Arsenal Gear. Said iterations do not all take the form of a submersible craft. Somehow, a non-Tinkertech solution was found for latency issues.

* * *

 **Explanation for those unfamiliar with MGSV** :

In 1985, following a showdown with a son of Big Boss in Tanzania, Venom Snake managed to recover a giant mecha called the Metal Gear Sahelanthropus - originally created by one of his enemies to propagate fear and ethnic conflict. He relocated the mecha to the headquarters of his organization, an oil rig in Seychelles waters, off the coast of Africa.

In present day, the Simurgh salvages the mecha from the seabed where Big Boss' organization once situated their base. Reconstructed with Tinkertech, it's a humanoid robot larger than the Behemoth - measuring 15 meters in height. It has stealth functions - including invisibility - and it's armed with weapons that contain a microorganism that metabolizes metal, capable of instantly rusting over most conventional military equipment. Due to Simurgh's Tinkertech, it can now fly, and it's piloted by some form of AI pod. It possesses miscellaneous other abilities that permit it to believably present itself as a threat on par with an Endbringer.

In this setting, Cauldron has subsumed the primary antagonist in the Metal Gear series - a hidden organization that once manipulated the government of the United States from behind the scenes, referred to as Cipher. The events of MGSV were the result of a subordinate organization of Cipher - the XOF black ops group - going rogue. (They're the ones who built Sahelanthropus.) In the overarching plot of Metal Gear, however, Cipher created an artificial intelligence known as the Patriots, which was later installed as the controller of all of the organization's assets - including the thought/emotion/behavior-manipulating nanomachines manditorily injected into all battlefield personnel per United Nations sanctions as of 2014. Under Cauldron's control in this particular universe, the Patriots have been repurposed as the hacking tool and ideological regulation system known as Trismegistos. Mostly, it manipulates information on the internet to promote Cauldron's agenda.

For *certain reasons*, Cauldron has used Trismegistos to carefully cultivate the belief that 'conventional weapons' such as Metal Gears are incomparable to the power of capes. As a result of the Simurgh's reactivation of the Sahelanthropus, however, Alexandria worries that their efforts will be undone. To address this concern, Doctor Mother has prepared a plan in which the brand new mass-production model Metal Gear RAY Mk. II's owned by the United States Marine Corps will end up being trashed by the Sahelanthropus in the event of an attack, despite being presented to the general public as state-of-the-art technology. She believes that this will prevent people from imagining that any random Metal Gear out there is capable of taking on S-Rank threats of parahuman origin.

On the subject of Sahelanthropus being a creation of Cipher's, Alexandria observes that 'the phantoms left behind by Cipher' haven't all been taken care of yet.


	14. Epilogue II: Valkyrie

I3. **Epilogue II** : **Valkyrie**

* * *

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 **► Topic: Virtue (Dedicated Discussion Thread)**  
 **In: Boards ► Places ► America ► New Hampshire**  
 **Zacharias** (Original Poster) (Veteran Member)  
Posted On May 26th 2011:

Just to prevent the occasional discussion on Virtue from being lost to the constant, torrential updates on BB News General, I've decided to launch a dedicated thread. Some ground rules, first:

1) Speculation is allowed, but let's try to keep things founded in fact wherever possible. No extremely outlandish theories, m'kay?  
2) As usual, if the subject of the thread makes an account and actually decides to post, please be respectful. Flooding them with inane questions will probably result in moderator intervention, and generally makes you look like an ass.

With that out of the way, the following is an abridged copypaste of Virtue's profile in the Wiki (accessed June 5th, 2011):

* * *

 **Virtue**

Alignment: _Hero_  
Affiliation: _Guild-Vancouver_  
Power Classification: _Stranger 1_  
Aliases: _Venom (unofficial)_  
Costume: _n/a_

Sex: _n/a (male pronouns used for convenience)_  
Age: _n/a_  
Nationality: _Canada_

Period of Activity: _January 2011 ~ present_  
Area of Activity: _Vancouver, British Columbia (previous), Brockton Bay, NH (current)_

* * *

Virtue is a junior/rookie Hero affiliated with Guild-Vancouver, acting under the direct supervision of Dragon. A recent arrival in Brockton Bay, NH, he began to contribute to cleanup of the local crime scene sometime between late April and early May, 2011.

To date, Virtue has made no official public appearances, and claimed no credit for crime-fighting activities. However, authorities have to his efforts attributed the capture of numerous criminals, including Cricket and Rune of the Empire-88, and Trainwreck and Mush of the Merchants; specifically, Virtue is associated with a large number of 'suspect dropoffs' reported by use of a distinct synthetic voice to the Brockton Bay Police Department and the PRT-ENE. 'Citizen's arrests' of a similar presentation have been attributed to Virtue by Vancouver authorities since January 2011.

Testimony from arrested criminals gives no consistent visual description of Virtue; opponents are generally rendered unconscious moments after becoming aware of his presence, and frequently recall only that a 'shadow' entered their peripheral vision. Documented methods of incapacitation utilized by Virtue include physical trauma and choking - though in some cases, criminals have reported compatriots falling unconscious without obvious outward cause. Whether this is a direct effect of Virtue's power is unknown.

According to an official profile provided by Guild-Vancouver, Virtue is classified only as a Stranger 1. However, the PRT has confirmed his use of unspecified Tinkertech equipment, thought to be supplied by Dragon.

[/wiki]

The Wiki entry pretty much covers all of the relevant content so far posted to BB News General. If anyone has corrections or new information, please post it here!

 **Edit:** _Updated Aliases. (06/22/2011)_

* * *

 **(Showing page 3 of 45)**

 **► Bagrat** (The Guy in the Know) (Veteran Member)  
Replied On May 27th 2011:

Personally, I'm concerned about his general MO. A complete absence of identity is dangerous, because it gives leeway for hostile parties to fabricate, distort, and misrepresent.

This is one of the (numerous) reasons the PRT usually advises independent capes either to join up, become affiliated, or at least set up a PR-friendly face for the public. It isn't just for the kiddies. It's to provide visibility, so that people have something to latch on to.

Yes, I *am* aware that Virtue's a registered member of the Guild. However, commenting without knowledge of his specific arrangement with the team, I'm expressing the opinion that as far as management of PR goes, he might as well be an independent. The sort of anonymity he presently 'enjoys' is of merit only to criminals. To a hero, it's a setback.

 **► Antigone**  
Replied On May 27th 2011:

Bagrat: I think you're presuming that Virtue /has to/ fit into the trappings of a particular kind of hero. There's no rule that says capital-H Heroes need to be public figures. They can be as private as they want to be.

 **► XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
Replied On May 27th 2011:

Winged_One: So, a shape-shifting shadow monster, like in that one Earth Aleph comic series? I guess I can buy that. Nobody's actually seen what Virtue looks like, so it's entirely possible he's a Case 53 or something.

 **► Winged_One** (Awesomest Write-tan)  
Replied On May 27th 2011:

XxVoid_CowboyxX: You'll have to clarify? I don't actually read a lot of comic books.

 **► XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
Replied On May 27th 2011:

Winged_One: I don't either, but he was a villain from one of the Spider-Man movies. I think his name was Venom or something?

 **► Ota-Tamashi** (Wiki Warrior) (Not a tinker)  
Replied On May 27th 2011:

XxVoid_CowboyxX: Venom isn't a shape-shifting shadow monster, and he didn't originate in any of the movie continuities. He's an amorphous extraterrestrial parasite that first appeared in the Secret Wars limited series published by Marvel in 1984. Spider-Man temporarily used him as a replacement for his damaged suit. Later on, he became his own character.

For more details:  
Venom (comics)

If you're going to talk about comic book characters, the least you can do is look them up in Wikipedia first ...

 **► XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
Replied On May 27th 2011:

Ota-Tamashi: Dude, no need for nerd rage. Seriously.

Also, having now gone wiki-diving, I'm more and more confident that Winged_One's crazy theory isn't so crazy after all. It's totally possible that Virtue's some sort of shape-shifting Case 53 that's normally just an amorphous black blob. He's a "Stranger 1" because he's not actually causing people not to notice him through telepathic influence or whatever. He's just hard to notice, because nobody's looking for a puddle of black goo hiding in the shadows.

If you go with the parasite thing, maybe he can only take 'human form' by using a person as a host. That's why he's so camera-shy and private about his cape identity: He doesn't actually have a face or body to show anyone, and anyone familiar with the comic-book Venom would realize what he is if he pretends to be a costume in public.

And if you get down to it, Virtue's name begins with a 'V' too. An explicit reference?

 **► Bagrat** (The Guy in the Know) (Veteran Member)  
Replied On May 27th 2011:

Antigone: I'm speaking less from the angle of "what should be" and more in terms of "what could happen." When a Hero doesn't have a face, they might as well be a Villain. Take the word of the press and give it the right spin, and they're already a demon.

Words have power. Identities can be bestowed. If you need evidence, look no further than the last few posts.

XxVoid_CowboyxX: ... I don't even have a response for this. Instead, I'm just gonna refer you to the ground rules posted by the OP. If you're going to be making outlandish claims, at least make an effort to provide evidence.

Also, Winged_One merely speculated that Virtue's power may entail shifting into a shadowy, immaterial Breaker state - similar to Shadow Stalker. This thing about Virtue being a parasitic Case 53 is all you. Please don't arbitrarily misattribute the theory.

 **► Clockblocker** (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)  
Replied On May 27th 2011:

My god... It's all starting to make sense now...  
You know what? I'm just going to start calling him Venom from now on. Freakin' Strangers ...

 **USER HAS RECEIVED AN INFRACTION FOR THIS POST: See PM. -Tin_Mother**

 **► BadSamurai**  
Replied On May 27th 2011:

Bagrat: Not everyone cares about things like that. For some, a sense of justice is enough to act, no matter what anyone thinks.

 **End of Page. 1** **, 2 , 3, 4, 5 ... 43, 44, 45**

* * *

 **► Topic: Endbringers: Boston - June 20th, 2011 (Post-Incident Discussion)**  
 **In: Boards ► News ► America**  
 **Genos** (Original Poster) (Verified PRT Agent)  
Posted On Jun 22nd 2011:

This is the official post-incident discussion thread for the attack perpetrated on Boston by the Endbringer "Sahelanthropus" on June 20th, 2011. For news and other information regarding the incident, please refer to the navigation links below.

Official Incident Report   
General News & Updates   
Casualties & Missing Persons   
Disaster Relief Updates   
Insurance Information

When posting, please be mindful that other users may have lost family members or loved ones during the incident.

* * *

 **(Showing page 31 of 108)**

 **► Iblis**  
Replied On Jun 23rd 2011:

Un_Owen: "Sahel" + "Anthropus" = "The Man of Sahel"  
I find it incredibly annoying that even the newscasters are tripping up over the name.  
It's really not that hard to pronounce.

 **► Chubster** (Verified Cape)  
Replied On Jun 23rd 2011:

WaterGlider: The 4th wasn't really even "fighting" us with its full capabilities until 20 minutes in, when the Marines finally arrived with their RAY. It was actually _holding back_. Everyone gathered was initially encouraged by the fact that we could apparently damage the exterior chassis with attacks that packed enough force, unlike the usual - but right when the Marines showed up, the dents and fractures that covered the surface magically healed away as if they never existed.

It was all downhill from there. The 4th started venting out brown smoke that rusted over any metal it touched. The RAY lasted for all of 5 seconds before turning into a hunk of noncombustible trash, and visibility was close to zero on the front lines. I never figured that a 50-foot monstrosity would be able to hide itself so easily, but it just vanished away and _started to sing_. Right about then, we noticed the zombies.

Putting it up front, I just got out of 48 hours of mandatory M/S isolation, so it isn't likely that I'll suddenly flip out and start chowing on people's brains - probably.

To clarify for the people who tl;dr'd the PRT Incident Report and haven't been watching the news, though:

As far as we know, the 4th's singing-and-zombiefication gig doesn't operate like Zizz-style mind control. The effect is induced by some sort of microbe carried inside of the brown smoke, which puts victims into a zombie-like state where noises can direct their behavior. Most of the guys at the front were hit, and at the time, we had no idea it was a temporary condition. The zombies still had full use of their powers, and when they attacked, people defended themselves - lethally. The majority of the casualties wracked up during the incursion ended up being the result of friendly fire. If not for the fact that somebody brought along a sniper rifle with tranquilizer ammunition, the body count would've been far higher.

Not being technologically inclined, I have zero clue how the zombiefication microbe actually works. All I know is, it's some sort of short-lived Tinkertech thing that starts to decay as soon as the 4th isn't around to regulate its behavior. If more details are necessary, you'll have to ask the PRT.

 **Edit:** _I sincerely apologize if the tone of this post and any other responses that I've made in this thread seem flippant or inappropriate, given the circumstances. For certain reasons, I basically haven't been sleeping, and I guess it's affecting me worse than I thought. Again, sorry._

 **► Tumbles**  
Replied On Jun 23rd 2011:

 _"it isn't likely that I'll suddenly flip out and start chowing on people's brains - probably."_  
Zombie jokes? Really? There's a time and place for things, Chubster. I don't think this is it.

 **► Un_Owen**  
Replied On Jun 23rd 2011:

Iblis: God only knows why they chose a name like that in the first place.  
Doesn't even fit the pattern of the other Endbringer.

 **► Answer Key**  
Replied On Jun 23rd 2011:

Get off his case, Tumbles. Guy put his life on the line to save the frontliners caught up in the mess. The least you can do is be thankful that a cape present on the scene is bothering to answer questions.

Chubster: Is there anything else you can tell us about Shally's capabilities? Feels like information's being suppressed, because the news just keeps going on about the voodoo bullshit and nothing else.

 **► Chubster** (Verified Cape)  
Replied On Jun 23rd 2011:

Tumbles: I apologize. I'll try to be more sensitive.

Answer Key: Thank you. Personally, I haven't gotten the impression that the PRT is keeping anyone from speaking; at least, nobody's told me to sign a nondisclosure agreement or anything.

To answer your question, though: At the very very beginning, people were thinking the PRT made a mistake in sounding the Endbringer sirens, because the 4th in its initial state looked and fought exactly like an out-of-date bipedal tank. It was mostly just shooting at us with conventional weaponry you'd expect a typical metal gear to be armed with - Gatling guns, missile launchers, a railgun, a flamethrower, etc. There wasn't anything that even approached Tinkertech.

Once enough capes arrived on the scene, though, it stopped 'crouching' and shifted into a 'humanoid' form more akin to the other Endbringers. It still shot at us, but now it was using a flaming sword-whip that could be driven into the ground to create a row of giant metallic pylons. The pylons were apparently structurally unstable or something, because they'd explode into shrapnel on contact with a solid object, tearing up anything nearby. I only managed to survive because of my power.

The 'smoke mode' engaged when the RAY turned up is already covered in my previous post, but to clarify: When I say the 4th 'concealed' itself, I mean that it literally vanished. You'd think you'd be able to track it down by homing in on its weird robotic singing, but the sound came from pretty much everywhere. Aside from generating the zombies and the rusting gas, though, no real offensive actions were taken. 20 minutes later, when the singing stopped and the smoke started letting up, the 4th was nowhere to be found.

That about covers everything I noticed during the fight. If there's anything that I haven't explained in enough depth, just ask away, and I'll try to answer to the best of my ability. I can't guarantee that I'll be able to regurgitate all of the fine details, though.

 **► Chrome**  
Replied On Jun 23rd 2011:

Was it just hiding in the smoke? Or did people confirm that it couldn't be tracked with infrared / echolocation / etc.?  
Unrelatedly, in this video at 1:45, is that a wolf kidnapping people with balloons? What's the story behind that?

 **► Ota-Tamashi** (Wiki Warrior) (Not a tinker)  
Replied On Jun 23rd 2011:

Chubster: I've read through the PRT Incident Report several times, and while it does seem to be a fairly comprehensive in its documentation of the battle, I can't help but feel as if it might have missed something in interests of brevity. If you have the time, do you think you could maybe list out anything you noticed on the scene that the Report didn't mention? I'd be interested to know if any comparison was made between the performance of the Sahelanthropus and an existing Metal Gear.

Also, regarding the mass-production model Metal Gear RAY Mk. II: The body is animated with carbon nanotube muscle fibers, and armor-plated with a certain type of ceramic (titanium nitride). Assuming standard atmospheric pressure at sea level, neither of these materials are particularly prone to oxidation, and it doesn't make a lot of sense that the same process that would rust over metals would immobilize a Metal Gear. Was there any official explanation for this?

Thank you in advance!

 **► Chubster** (Verified Cape)  
Replied On Jun 23rd 2011:

Chrome: One of the Tinkers I was working with tried to locate the 4th with infrared goggles, but she couldn't see anything through the smoke. I don't know if echolocation was attempted.

About the 'balloon wolf': It was apparently 'a normal rescue dog' trained by Dragon to extract people incapacitated in combat, according to the general debriefing. During the final phase of the fight, a Guild cape by the name of Venom was tranqing zombies from half a mile away, and the dog went around systematically ballooning them outta the hot zone.

Having seen the so-called 'dog' close up, though, I'm pretty sure that Dragon's mistaken about its species ...

Ota-Tamashi: It'll take awhile for me to complete your request, but off the top of my head:

a) There were people saying over the com early on (before it stood upright) that the 4th looked identical to the 'Metal Gear REX' - the bipedal tank that the one villain group hijacked in Alaska a couple of years back.

b) The 4th isn't composed of the same stuff as the other Endbringers - or, at least, Leviathan and Simurgh. Somebody commented that, aside from the Behemoth (because his dynakinesis interferes with analysis equipment), it's been shown that the Endbringers are made of a specific substance that exists nowhere else in the natural world. Comparatively, the 4th's structure appears to comprise mostly of depleted uranium. The Tinkers on the com were going on and on about uranium being far too heavy and impractical for use as an armor base in a metal gear.

c) There was quite a bit of disagreement about the 4th's classification as an Endbringer. Reportedly, PRT Thinkers unanimously voted in favor of applying the category - but people were saying that it really only merits distinction as a 'typical' S-Rank threat, even given the zombies and the rust. Purely in terms of property damage and casualties / human cost, it's estimated that the Boston incursion is the fourth lowest in magnitude in the history of Endbringer attacks.

d) Owing to the bit about impracticality in point 'b' and other fine details that I'm not too clear on, there was a consensus among the Tinkers that the 4th probably isn't an actual refitted metal gear. Rather, they call it a 'hugely illogical construct' that just happens to superficially resemble a bipedal tank.

e) Following Leviathan's attack on Manhattan in 2007, this is the second time the United States Marines have embarrassed themselves in an effort to engage an Endbringer with a conventional arms. In the aftermath of the incursion, there were calls from folks in the armed forces for the brass to "leave cape business well enough alone," but I'm not sure how prevalent this opinion actually is.

About the RAY rusting up: Honestly, I have no idea. My knowledge of the science behind the 4th's capabilities is pretty sketchy, so I'm probably not the right person to ask in the first place. If you want, though, I can refer you to a friend of mine with a better handle on the details.

 **► XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
Replied On Jun 23rd 2011:

The Sahelanthropus might be Tinkertech,  
The Simurgh can make Tinkertech.

Coincidence? I think not!

 **End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 ... 106, 107, 108**

* * *

 **Topic: Iriomote appointed Director to PRT-ENE**  
 **In: Boards ► Organizations ► America ► PRT ► Press Releases**  
 **PRT_NewsBot** (Original Poster) (Verified PRT Press Release Agent)  
Posted On Jun 15th 2011:

 _Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, June 15th, 2011_.

Mr. Charles Adam Iriomote has this afternoon been appointed to full authority as Director at the Parahuman Response Team - East North-East (henceforth, PRT-ENE) in Brockton Bay, NH. Resituated as Interim Director to the PRT-ENE in the wake of Emily Piggot's dismissal earlier this year, Mr. Iriomote has devoted the duration of his temporary assignment to the investigation and removal of the systematic corruption alleged to pervade the branch. These efforts are expected to continue along the course of his official posting.

"As a federal law enforcement body, the PRT exists at the pleasure of the people of the United States," Mr. Iriomote stated at a press event today. "As such, its actions should be answerable to the people, rather than to the inscrutable agendas of the few. In the coming year, I hope to implement a number of policy changes toward the improvement our overall operational transparency, and to build stronger ties with the community here in Brockton Bay."

Formerly serving as Deputy Director at the Houston Regional Office, Mr. Iriomote is the architect of the experimental PRT-sponsored Hero team 'HAVEN,' which functions independently of the Protectorate. So as to assist Mr. Iriomote in his plans to mitigate the growth of organized parahuman crime within the metropolitan area, the members of the HAVEN team - Kalika, Ash Raven, and Devilfish - are due for reassignment to Brockton Bay as of Friday, June 18th. Their inclusion within the amended patrol rotation of the local PRT forces is expected to substantially bolster the performance of the branch in the capacity of incident prevention and suppression.

For further information, please refer to the official PRT Press Releases website.

* * *

"Dave?" called Hal.

He turned his gaze from the flat-screen television, tilting his head.

"Yeah?" he called back.

"You might wanna take a look at this."

With a grunt and a sigh, he pulled himself from the couch, pacing from the living room to the cramped confines of the rear office. Avoiding the neatly piled stacks of Earth Aleph comics, he made his way to the side of Hal's workstation. On the left of the three screens, there was a press release of some sort. David narrowed his eyes at the photograph near the top.

"Ocelot?" he asked. "What's he doing in the Parahuman Response Team?"

"According to his public profile, he's been there for awhile," said Hal. "All the while that Revolver Ocelot was in active service as a member of FOXHOUND, a 'Charles Adam Iriomote' was working his way up the ranks at PRT-Houston."

"Living out a double life, huh?"

As an elite unit specialized in the execution of covert directives, FOXHOUND favored the solitary, unsupported deployment of ground personnel as a standard operating procedure - insulating the nature of any given mission from other members of the same command for purposes of security and deniability. If Ocelot and his superiors so desired, in other words, it wouldn't have been difficult for him to embed himself as a deep cover plant in separate organization without the awareness of his colleagues.

An executive office in the Parahuman Response Team wasn't precisely a low-visibility posting, though. Given Ocelot's role in the Shadow Moses Incident, David would've expected him to vanish off the grid entirely. The fact that he would so brazenly expose himself raised a lot of questions.

"Well," said Hal, "unlike you, he isn't exactly a fugitive from the law. 'Revolver Ocelot' isn't mentioned in any official account of the events at Shadow Moses Island six years ago - even in the internal records at the Pentagon and the Department of Defense."

"You bothered to check?"

"Well, yeah. Awhile back."

David frowned.

"We're not gonna have to move again, are we?"

"I'm absolutely certain I covered my tracks this time!" Hal replied, slightly flustered. "In any case, my point is - whoever it is that Ocelot was working for during Shadow Moses, they're powerful enough to wipe away any evidence of his involvement. If he's managed to assume a new identity, it wouldn't be something that they're unaware of. Rather, he'd only be able to pull it off if his backers decided to permit it." He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Maybe it's their idea of a retirement present or something."

"A cushy job at the PRT is one hell of a severance package," said David. "Not sure if I agree with your conclusion, though."

"Why's that?"

"He's left behind loose ends from his previous life - people who know what he looks like, and what he did."

"You're referring to us?"

"I'm sure we aren't the only ones. A man like him doesn't make a lot of friends. Unless there's a specific motive behind it, there's no reason for him to show his face in public."

Hal leaned back in his chair, scrunching his brow in thought.

"In other words, it might be a trap," he said. "He's using himself as bait to draw somebody out of hiding."

"It's a possibility," said David. "Probably not the only one, but it has its likelihood." He turned to the door. "C'mon. Let's pack up. We're going on a road trip."

Hal blinked.

"What?" he asked. "Why?"

"Your sister's got a teaching position over at MIT, right? She was in Boston when the Endbringer turned up?"

"Well, yes - but when I contacted her, she said she was fine ..."

"And as her only family member in the States, shouldn't you drop by to check on her, just to be sure?"

Hal stared, unamused.

"You're going to Brockton Bay, aren't you?"

David let out a slight chuckle.

"The Endbringers have access to a Metal Gear," he replied, "and Ocelot's just gained the command of a PRT branch. Things are converging in New England, and I think it's time Philanthropy got a piece of the action ..."

* * *

She awoke in a plain, windowless office, seated as if for a job interview. Upon her lap, there was a hand pistol - fully loaded, given the weight.

"Good afternoon," said the person behind the desk - a clean-shaven Caucasian man in his thirties or forties, nondescript aside from his spectacles. "For now, I would advise that you refrain from speaking, accessing your powers, or attempting to escape. The Tinkertech choker on your neck will make things quite uncomfortable if you fail to comply. If you understand, nod once."

Without hesitation, she raised her pistol - cocked and pulled the trigger.

In the moment of recoil, the man had raised his arm - moving without particular speed as he plucked the bullet from the air. He placed it upon his desk, and a thin stream of smoke trailed from where the metal came into contact with the wood beneath.

"You do have a history of insubordination, don't you?" the man asked blandly, as if speaking about the weather. "But, of course, we were already aware of that. It's why the gun was given to you in the first place. You've just now received an object lesson in the nature of your circumstances, and of our relationship henceforth. To summarize, nod when I tell you to nod."

Glaring, she set the gun upon the desk and nodded once.

"Very good," said the man. "Allow me to get to the point, then." He folded his hands before him. "Personally, I despise you. You're weak and immature - too full of yourself to comprehend that you aren't as important as you pretend to be within the confines of your little mind. However, there are those within my organization who feel that your power might someday prove to be useful. They've consequently requested that I make you a job offer - to help you realize your full potential as a parahuman. Nod once if you understand anything I've just stated."

Again, she nodded.

"Dishonest too," the man observed, removing his spectacles and wiping the lenses with a handkerchief. "No matter. Disarm Eight-Nine-Three."

She heard a click from the choker about her neck.

"For now, it's safe to speak," said the man, putting his glasses back on. "If you have any questions, ask."

She did as directed.

"What happens if I say no?" she asked.

"Your choice would be taken away from you," the man replied. "It's a quick, relatively painless procedure, and you wouldn't suffer for very long. You'd be given a lobotomy and a series of neural implants - and for the rest of your days, you'd live out a pampered life as a radio-controlled drone. Potentially, we'd lose the use of your power, but that isn't a very big concern for me."

She clenched her jaw. The man was utterly unreadable - as if he'd trained extensively to remove any tells of intention from his face and gestures. Whether or not he was joking about invasive neurosurgery, she couldn't guess.

"What do I get out of this if I say yes?"

"Eventually, your freedom," said the man. "But in the short term, your strongest desire is revenge. As incentive, we'll bankroll your efforts - provide you with the means and the opportunity to carry out the deed."

In the very short term, her strongest desire was in fact to be rid of the man seated before her - but choosing not to voice the thought, she fixed him with an icy glare.

"I'll bite," she said. "I'll play your game."

With a tight, business-like smile, the man nodded.

"My name," he said, "is Harbinger. Welcome to the XOF."

* * *

 **omake** / **why he couldn't recruit her** :

 _"Time for another bed time story, _. This one's about _ _."_

 _"You don't need me to tell you there's whole nations in Africa tearing themselves apart in the name of ethnic cleansing. Well, she was born into that environment."_

 _"When she was a little girl, her village was attacked by rival armed factions. Her parents and siblings were slaughtered, and she was left a refugee. She took her last surviving relative, her baby brother, and ran as far away from the war zone."_

 _"One day, they came across an enemy unit, so she took her brother and hid in an abandoned shack. And then her brother started to cry ..."_

 _"She knew that if the soldiers heard the noise, they would find them and kill them both. So she wrapped her hand as tight as she could around his mouth. As the footsteps gradually went away, she came back to her senses."_

 _"Her brother wasn't crying anymore."_

 _"Horrified, she pulled her hand away, covered in sweat and spit."_

 _"He wasn't breathing."_

 _"They say _ eat their own when they die. She was spotted wandering through the thick of battle carrying her dead brother in her arms. She had visions, too - a _ walking alongside her. Every night, the _ would howl and cry just like her brother did that day."_

 _"Eventually, she made it to a government-run refugee camp. But by then, her brother's body had rotted away."_

 _"The camp was crowded with refugees like herself, and little children like her brother. Day and night she was tormented by the cries of babies. The _ that followed her heard her sorrowful screams and answered. He made his way around the camp. And one by one ... He silenced the children."_

 _"She tried to stop it, but she was powerless. A few days passed, and on the eve of the enemy's raid, there wasn't a child left. The adults who survived were torn up pretty bad."_

 _"Of course, there was never any _ in that camp. She was the one who'd killed those babies. When the creeping realization of the truth finally overcame her denial, she forced herself to remember: She recalled the feeling of the children's necks as she crushed them; the howls that issued from the throat of her _ as it stalked the nursery; the terror in the eyes of the adults. Each and every death she brought, she carved within her heart."_

 _"To her, they were an epitaph - a promise to her brother. For his sake, in his memory, _ _ would descend - the night that falls upon the field of battle."_

* * *

 **Notes** :

All that remains now is Snippet Ex.

a) A bullet isn't evenly heated in the process of firing, and the burst of gunfire and friction isn't of sufficient duration to raise the temperature of the entire metallic mass. Thus, in theory, you would be able to touch parts of a bullet in flight without burning yourself.

b) Gallant was originally supposed to appear in the PHO section, noting that he sensed 'an incredible lust for revenge' from Sahelanthropus. I decided to cut it because it would've been out of character for him to reveal anything so controversial to the public at large without permission from his superiors and/or PRT + Protectorate PR.

c) In keeping with the long-standing Emmerich tradition, I originally intended to have Emma die at the hands of Sahelanthropus. However, even implying the possibility of such a thing would've messed too much with the tone of the Snake and Hal scene to be practical.

d) The girl in the scene with Numbers Man is not Taylor. It was originally supposed to be Sophia, but I decided against it.

e) Prior to Taylor's awakening, the identity of "Virtue" was utilized by Dragon to test the performance of a certain stealth-oriented suit within the metropolitan area of Vancouver. At any given time, Dragon maintains several throwaway identities like this.

f) Due to memes unintentionally propagated by Greg and Clockblocker online, Taylor ended up with the nickname of 'Venom.'


	15. Truth: Daniel Robert Hebert

Ex. **Truth** : **Daniel Robert Hebert**

* * *

 _June 16th, 1991_ :

 _"But if you hadn't intervened right then, Annette would've been shot ..."_

 _"She wouldn't have been there to begin with if I hadn't forced the FBI to let her try and negotiate. I knowingly endangered her - all to buy time."_

 _"In the end, you saved her ..."_

 _"The biological agent you were exposed to was leaked to Lustrum's group by a certain scientist under my supervision. It was my carelessness that caused this incident. I came here today to make amends."_

 _"... Why are you admitting this to me? I'm just a civilian."_

 _"I wanted to thank the two of you, and to apologize."_

* * *

 _June 19th, 2011_ :

At the noise of the bells hanging from the entrance of the restaurant, Danny paused the cassette tape playing on his aging Walkman and turned his gaze. An elderly man slowly approached across the checkered dining floor, supporting himself with a cane.

"You're lookin' healthy," Danny greeted.

The man chuckled.

"At my age," he replied, in a slow rasping monotone, "anything that isn't 'dead' is 'healthy.'"

Danny smiled.

"Good to see you, George," he said.

"You too, Daniel," said the man, gingerly seating himself opposite. "On appearances alone, this place isn't as much of a dive as I was led to believe."

Danny glanced about. The curtain-dimmed interior of Fugly Bob's was done up in the style of a vintage 60's diner - clean and fairly well-maintained. Truthfully, though, the place had only been built in '97; and the appearance was more for aesthetic appeal than any effort at authenticity.

"Yeah," said Danny. "Food's pretty decent too. It's become something of a local landmark."

"You've ordered already?" asked George, looking to the glass of Coke before him.

"For the both of us. They're only serving the Chemi-Burger Classic today, unfortunately. Most of the kitchen staff is off on holiday."

"The Chemi-Burger, hm?" said the old man, smiling with nostalgia. "Been awhile since I've had one. It's a damn shame Kazuhira wasn't able to extend his Maxi Buns chain to Arizona."

Danny nodded. Miller's Maxi Buns, the largest of the fast-food franchises operated by the McDonell's Corporation, was in the large part geographically restricted to the East Coast of the United States and Canada. The late McDonell Benedict "Kazuhira" Miller had hoped originally to expand the chain across North America - but with the rise of food industry criticism and the organics / health-conscious movement in the early 2000's, efforts began to flag.

Fugly Bob's was one of the two remaining McDonnell's restaurants in Brockton Bay. Like a handful of others across the seaboard, it was in truth a front and way station for the HUMINT Exploitation Company, or HEC - a clandestine intelligence service that Miller had established in his mercenary days during the 1970's and 80's.

Bob's was, incidentally, the single point of contact maintained between Miller's people and the Hebert family in the years following Taylor's birth.

"Father's Day, yet again," said George. "Hard to believe it's been twenty years since we first met." With milky irises, he met Danny's gaze. "You'll be doing something with your daughter later this evening, I suppose?"

"It's her birthday today, so I'll be taking her out for dinner."

For as long as Taylor had been alive, Father's Day had never been celebrated in the Hebert household. It was a non-tradition that Danny had no intention of changing.

"Not to rush you or anything," he said, shifting gears, "but, uh - were you able to look into what I asked about?"

Taking a sip from his straw, the elderly man set his cola back upon its coaster.

"I was," he replied. "However, the information you seek is convoluted, assembled of truths that men have literally given their lives to obtain. If you truly wish, I can speak of it - but once I do, you'll be irrevocably involved. Are you certain you wish for me to proceed?"

Danny had halfway expected the warning.

"I haven't come all this way just to pull out now," he replied. "So, yes. Absolutely."

"In that case, let's start from the beginning," said George. "How familiar are you with Project MKUltra?"

"The CIA mind control program?"

"Correct."

"I've heard of it before."

From a pocket in his vest, George removed a small stack of black-and-white photographs - setting them upon the plaid tablecloth.

Pushing the group photo on top in front of Danny, he said, "This photograph was taken in 1962. The man on the left is Sidney Gottlieb, supervisor of the project - better known in the intelligence community as Black Sorceror. At center is Doctor Donald Ewen Cameron, the psychologist that spearheaded the research into long-term behavioral modification. Our concern, however, is with the young man on the right - a doctoral student who then went the name of M.W. Mond."

"Who is he?"

"Cameron's successor," George replied. "When the CIA officially discontinued MKUltra in 1973, a certain organization inherited the assets of the project, and relocated the core research outside of North America. M.W. Mond vanished, and the HEC didn't come to be aware of his existence until 1984, when he was identified in Cyprus - having posed for several years as a surgeon and neurologist at a military hospital in the British Sovereign Base Area at Dhekelia."

"Isn't that where-"

"Yes. It was the birthplace of the _bidee' holoni_ \- the man you knew of as 'John South,' or 'Ahab,' as he referred to himself."

Danny stared into his cola.

"This M.W. Mond, then," he said. "He's the one that implanted John with Big Boss' memories and personality?"

"He wasn't working alone," said George. "And I wouldn't use the word 'implant,' precisely. Elements of the personality can persist as a general behavioral heuristic even in cases of complete retrograde amnesia. With a combination of drugs, hypnosis, and other procedures, John's mind was embedded with the memories and associations that comprised the individual known as 'Big Boss' - but the specific manner in which he acted upon these 'memes' ultimately differed from his original. 'Ahab' was a name that well befit him."

"It isn't just a reference to Moby-Dick?"

"In Hebrew, the name 'Ahab' means 'brother of the father,'" George replied. "John was associated with Big Boss as a divergence from a shared point of origin; not merely as a shadow or a reflection. He was always his own person."

Danny pressed a knuckle against his chin.

"What you're saying is," he said, "the changes I've seen in Taylor's behavior and personality since her awakening might have come about because she was subjected to the same procedure? Or am I misunderstanding something?"

"Without a thorough physiological and psychiatric examination, I wouldn't be able to speak with certainty. Since she hasn't openly exhibited the acquisition of foreign memories, we can hypothesize for now that a non-identical procedure targeted at the control of the unconscious was used. There is, however, a more direct connection."

From the stack, George removed two photographs, placing them beside the image of the MKUltra staff.

"This," he said, pointing to man in the first, "is M.W. Mond as of 1984." He moved his finger to the second, a photograph of an older man in a doctor's coat. "And this is 'Doctor Matthew William O'Brien,' neurologist and senior psychiatric consultant for the PRT. Between July 2010 and April 2011, he served as adjunct staff at the Lord's Bay Regional Hospital, where your daughter was an inpatient. Then, at the beginning of May, he was reassigned to the PRT branch in Houston, Texas."

Danny narrowed his eyes. The man pictured was clearly an aged M.W. Mond.

"He had access to Taylor?" he asked.

"We have no evidence that he was ever directly in contact with her," George replied. "However, he provided psychiatric care to the Brockton Bay Wards, the Protectorate Hero Armsmaster, and to your daughter's attending physician, Doctor Christos Constantinou."

To Danny, it made a degree of sense that Armsmaster would be targeted for manipulation; he was an authority figure that Taylor would undoubtingly obey. She'd been a fan of his ever since she was a small child - and in addition to negotiating the punishment of her bullies, the man had in the past two months expended a worrying amount of personal resources to sponsor her in her debut as the Cape known as Virtue.

Why manipulate the physician, though?

"Do we know what Mond was trying to do with Constantinou?" asked Danny.

George thinned his lips, placing before Danny a photograph of Taylor unconscious upon a hospital bed, baring the skin of her upper body. Damage and inflammation from cutaneous infections was clearly visible - but what struck cold Danny was the state of her left arm.

"... it's whole?" he asked.

"This came from a deleted batch of forensic photographs that the HEC recovered from the Brockton Bay Police Department. According to the metadata, the photograph was taken on the evening of January 3rd, about an hour after your daughter's incident came to light. The members of police responsible for the initial investigation were removed from the case without explanation, and promptly relocated to other precincts. By the time you were informed, Constantinou had begun to operate on Taylor - unnecessarily amputating her arm. It's very likely that her brain was tampered with as well."

"They ... removed her arm," said Danny, glaring at the photograph with clenched teeth. "Why? Why would they do this?"

"When Kazuhira enlisted you and Annette as surrogate parents for Project Athalia, it was with the intent to provide John with a legacy of his own, independent of Big Boss. Combining his genetic material with that of a young woman he favored, we hoped to preserve unto the future the possibilities that had gone unquenched." George paused. "It seems, however, that somebody caught wind of our plans. Presumably through Mond, they've very methodically imparted Taylor with the exact skills and capabilities exhibited by her biological parents - including extrasensory perception of the variety that the CIA's Stargate Project attempted to grant unto non-parahumans. The removal of her arm was to allow for the use of John's combat prosthetic."

"What did they hope to achieve, going through all of this effort?" asked Danny. "What the fuck was so important that they had to mutilate my daughter?"

"The HEC was able to obtain a number of heavily encrypted documents from a desktop computer used by Mond during his time in Brockton Bay," said George. "We haven't been able to decode them yet, but the file titles unexceptionally begin with the letters 'vss.' As you'll recall, John's code name as leader of the Diamond Dogs was 'Venom Snake.' My men have postulated consequently that 'vss' may be an acronym for 'Venom Snake Simulation.' Assuming this is valid, we believe that the party responsible intends to 'cultivate' your daughter as the literal replica of a legendary soldier."

"Who?" said Danny, unable to contain his heat. "Was it Cipher? Are they the ones behind this?"

George shook his head.

"The successors of Cipher care only for the _nilch'i_ , and have no interest in the legends of the past," he said. "The author of these events is likely another." From his stack, he slid forward the photo on bottom.

"Interim Director Iriomote of the PRT?" asked Danny, recognizing the man pictured.

"The _nashdoitsoh_ ," George replied. "The Russians know him as _Shalashaska_ , one of the co-founders of the Krasnaya Perchatka mercenary group. However, in my time with the Diamond Dogs, he was called 'Ocelot' - the former overseer of the HEC, and one of John's closest friends. We can't confirm with absolute confidence that he's the one who issued orders to Mond, but it's too much of a coincidence that he would abruptly appear in Brockton Bay."

Danny smiled - but about his glass of cola, his knuckles had whitened.

"Tell me, George," he said, artificially calm. "Is there any way I can arrange a meeting with this 'Ocelot?'"

* * *

 **1880**  
\- Code Talker is born.

 **1909**  
\- David Oh (Zero) is born.

 **1922**  
\- The Boss is born.

 **1935**  
\- John (Big Boss) is born.  
\- Venom Snake is born.

 **1942**  
\- Code Talker helps create the U.S. military code talkers' cipher book.

 **1943**  
\- On a covert mission to assassinate John von Neumann, alleged by German misinformation to be an infiltrator to the Manhattan Project, The Boss receives a bullet wound to the brain, and enters a coma. She recovers three months later, and is again fit for duty within six months.

 **1944**  
\- Adamska (Ocelot) is born in the midst of the Allied invasion of Normandy, France. Shortly thereafter, he is taken from his parents by agents of the Philosophers.

 **1945**  
\- "Huey" Emmerich is born.

 **1950**  
\- Robert Edison Fulton Jr. begins development of the Fulton Surface-to-Air Recovery System (STARS) in collaboration with the CIA and the U.S. Air Force.

 **1953**  
\- The CIA officially instates Project MKUltra to explore the intelligence applications of mind control.

 **1959**  
\- M.W. Mond, a doctoral student at McGill University in Montreal, is enlisted as a researcher in Project MKUltra.

 **1961**  
\- The Boss unofficially becomes the first American to enter space; she is the second human to visit space.

 **1962**  
\- The creation of the FOX Unit as a special forces division of the CIA is proposed by The Boss and Major Zero.

 **1964** \- [ **Metal Gear Solid 3** : **Snake Eater** ]  
\- The creation of the FOX Unit is officially sanctioned. Outside of The Boss' awareness, Major Zero instates the XOF as the FOX Unit's unconventional support unit.  
\- The agent code named Albatross (Skull Face) is given command of the XOF.  
\- Virtuous Mission.  
\- Operation Snake Eater.  
\- Death of The Boss.  
\- The comatose Volgin is transported to a research facility on the outskirts of Moscow.  
\- Code Talker begins his research of The End's remains.

 **1965**  
\- The Congo Crisis is brought to a close.

 **1967**  
\- China conducts its first hydrogen bomb test.  
\- EVA disappears, last seen in Hanoi.

 **1968**  
\- Daniel Robert Hebert is born.

 **1969**  
\- The U.S. Department of Defense successfully sends its first message using ARPANET.

 **1970** \- [ **Metal Gear Solid** : **Portable Ops** ]  
\- The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) enters into force.  
\- San Hieronymo Incident.  
\- Major Zero disbands FOX. Using assets acquired from the Philosophers, he forms the beginnings of the organization that would come to be known as Cipher.  
\- XOF is reorganized as a special forces organization subordinated to Cipher.

 **1971**  
\- The Democratic Republic of the Congo changes its name to Zaire.  
\- FOXHOUND is created as a covert operations unit under the U.S. Army, commanded by Big Boss. Roy Campbell serves as the unit's tactician.

 **1972**  
\- The "Les Enfants Terribles" project begins.  
\- Clones of Big Boss are born: Eli (Liquid Snake), David (Solid Snake), and George (Solidus Snake).  
\- Big Boss parts ways with Zero, and leaves the command of FOXHOUND.  
\- Roy Campbell is instated as acting commander of FOXHOUND.  
\- Big Boss founds the Militaires Sans Frontieres.

 **1973**  
\- Code Talker discovers a strain of archaea that metabolizes uranium.  
\- Project MKUltra is officially discontinued by the CIA. However, Cipher acquires a port of the project's assets, and continues research outside of North America.

 **1974** \- [ **Metal Gear Solid** : **Peace Walker** ]  
\- India conducts an atomic bomb test.  
\- Peace Walker incident.  
\- The U.S. and the Soviet Union agree on a general framework for the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II).

 **1975**  
\- Mother Base is destroyed.  
\- Zero hides Big Boss in a hospital on Cyprus and leaves him in Ocelot's care. He assigns M.W. Mond to assist Ocelot in the preparation of Venom Snake as a body double for Big Boss.  
\- Skull Face is reassigned to Africa.  
\- The vocal cord parasites are resurrected through reverse evolution.  
\- The Ho Chi Minh Campaign leads to the Fall of Saigon and Vietnam's reunification.  
\- The Soyuz and Apollo spacecraft dock in orbit.  
\- Kazuhira Miller founds the Diamond Dogs private military company. He creates the HUMINT Exploitation Company (HEC) as a support organization.

 **1976**  
\- The "Les Enfants Terribles" project is abandoned.  
\- Eli is taken to Great Britain.  
\- Zero suffers brain damage due to Skull Face's parasite attack.  
\- Hana (Miss Militia) is born.

 **1977**  
\- An underground nuclear test site is discovered beneath the Kalahari Desert.  
\- Bowing to international pressure, the South African government abandons the site.  
\- Zero visits Big Boss, then disappears completely, never to be seen in public again.

 **1978**  
\- The Marxist organization known as the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistane is (PKK, also known as the Kurdish Workers' Party) officially founded, initiating a new stage in the conflict between the Republic of Turkey and its Kurdish insurgency.

 **1979**  
\- The Iranian Revolution leads to the Iran Hostage Crisis.  
\- Eli escapes his handlers in Africa and disappears.  
\- President Somoza defects following the FSLN uprising, and the Nicaraguan Revolution comes to fruition.  
\- Vela satellite observes double flash in South African waters (Indian Ocean).  
\- The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan, bringing an end to detente.

 **1980**  
\- The Iran-Iraq War breaks out.  
\- Fearing the ripple effects of the Iranian Revolution, Western nations and the Soviet Union support Iraq.  
\- Emmerich's first child is born with Strangelove. He is named Hal.

 **1981**  
\- Operation Opera: Israeli bombers strike nuclear reactor under construction in Iraq.

 **1982**  
\- Scion is first sighted above the Atlantic Ocean.

 **1983**  
\- A suicide bomber attacks the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.  
\- The U.S. military invades Grenada.  
\- A boy later known as "Jack" is born to a Caucasian couple in Liberia.

 **1984** \- [ **Metal Gear Solid V** : **The Phantom Pain** ]  
\- Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov dies.  
\- Big Boss and Venom Snake awaken from their comas in Cyprus.  
\- Civilian airliner carrying "The Third Boy" crashes in the mountains of Ukraine.  
\- Quiet suffers full-body burns at the hospital on Cyprus, and undergoes parasite therapy to survive.  
\- Big Boss is reinstated as the commander of FOXHOUND.  
\- Metal Gear Sahelanthropus is deployed for the first time.  
\- Skull Face dies.  
\- Quiet dies.  
\- The Olympic Games are held in Los Angeles.  
\- The games are boycotted by Easter Bloc countries as retaliation for the Western boycott of the Moscow Olympics.  
\- The first superheroes emerge.

 **1985**  
\- Gorbachev takes office in the Soviet Union.  
\- East-West relations enter a second detente.  
\- Eli escapes from the Diamond Dogs with the Metal Gear Sahelanthropus, attempting to establish a "Kingdom of the Flies" in Lake Natron, Tanzania. However, his efforts are suppressed by Venom Snake.  
\- The decommissioned Sahelanthropus is sunk in the waters of Seychelles.  
\- Kazuhira Miller establishes the McDonell's Corporation, and creates Miller's Maxi Buns and Paunch Burger as subsidiary fast-food franchises.  
\- Hana (Miss Militia) triggers.  
\- Big Boss extracts Hana from an airbase in Syria.  
\- Hana is adopted by Roy Campbell, and changes her name to Hannah.

 **1986**  
\- Rebecca (Alexandria) acquires parahuman powers.  
\- Doctor Mother and Contessa recruit David (Eidolon) to Cauldron.

 **1987**  
\- Coming out of secrecy, superheroes begin to establish themselves as public figures.  
\- DARPA acquires documents pertaining to Venom Snake's combat prosthetic from the CIA.  
\- King, the leader of the parahuman serial killer alliance known as Slaughterhouse Nine, is killed by Jack Slash and Harbinger. Jack Slash succeeds him as leader of the group, and Harbinger vanishes.  
\- Meryl Silverburgh is born.

 **1988**  
\- Alexandria, Hero, Eidolon, and Legend form the original Protectorate.

 **1989**  
\- The Soviet Union makes a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, plunging the country into a civil war.  
\- Fall of the Berlin Wall.  
\- The Soviet Union dissolves.  
\- The First Liberian Civil War begins. Solidus (George), working as a CIA paramilitary, is covertly deployed to participate. - Embedded within the military outfit known as the Army of the Devil, Solidus becomes the commander of the Small Boys Unit, and temporarily adopts the pseudonym "King" - modelling his group after the Slaughterhouse Nine serial killers alliance.  
\- As an officer of the Army of the Devil, Solidus recruits a Caucasian boy as a child soldier, naming him "Jack," after Jack Slash. The boy proves his capabilities, and soon comes to be known as "Jack the Ripper."

 **1990**  
\- The Gulf War begins.

 **1991**  
\- Liquid (Eli) and Solid (David) are sent to the battlefield. Solid Snake participates in the final months of the Gulf War.  
\- A radical women's movement headed by Lustrum takes hostages at the University of New Hampshire, threatening to release a biological weapon if demands aren't met. Using the nature of the weapon as a pretense, Venom Snake (posing as Big Boss) orders FOXHOUND to perform an intervention.

 **1992**  
\- Behemoth, the first of the Endbringers, appears in Marun Field, Iran.

 **1993**  
\- South Africa acknowledges possession of nuclear weapons and simultaneously pledges to abolish its arsenal.  
\- The Protectorate is officially formed as a government-sanctioned superhero organization subordinate to the United States Government.  
\- The Parahuman Response Team is created as the Protectorate's oversight.

 **1994**  
\- Solid Snake is inducted as an operative of FOXHOUND.

 **1995** \- [ **Metal Gear** ]  
\- The Diamond Dogs private military company is disbanded. Under orders from Big Boss, Venom Snake parts ways with Kazuhira Miller.  
\- Big Boss officially establishes the fortified military nation "Outer Heaven" in South Africa.  
\- The Outer Heaven Uprising occurs, but is quashed by Solid Snake.  
\- Venom Snake dies.  
\- Big Boss uses Venom Snake's death to falsify his own, disappearing from the United States.  
\- Solid Snake resigns from FOXHOUND.  
\- Kazuhira Miller and Code Talker enlist Annette and Daniel Hebert as surrogate parents in "Project Athalia," a plan modelled after the "Les Enfants Terribles" - intended to provide a genetic successor to Venom Snake and Quiet.  
\- Taylor Anne Hebert is born.

 **1996**  
\- The First Congo War breaks out. As a result, President Mobufu is ousted from power in Zaire.  
\- Leviathan appears in Oslo, Norway.  
\- Petroleum production is unilaterally discontinued across the northern Atlantic.  
\- Colin (Armsmaster) triggers.

 **1997**  
\- Zaire officially becomes the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  
\- An oil rig originally situated off the shore of Newfoundland, Canada is sold to the United States PRT. It is relocated to Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, and is repurposed as a defensive stronghold.  
\- Dr. "Huey" Emmerich commits suicide.

 **1998**  
\- The Second Congo War breaks out due to causes such as ethnic hostility and resource conflicts.

 **1999** \- [ **Metal Gear 2** : **Solid Snake** ]  
\- Zanzibar Land Disturbance.  
\- Scion dons white body suit.  
\- Leviathan destroys Kyushu, Japan.

 **2000**  
\- Hero is killed in an engagement between the Protectorate and the Slaughterhouse Nine.  
\- Alexandria recovers from injuries inflicted by the Siberian.  
\- The surviving members of the original Protectorate are redesignated as the Triumvirate.  
\- Cauldron asserts control over Zero's faction of Cipher.  
\- Cipher's AI, the Patriots System, is redesignated as Trismegistos, and its primary servers are relocated to alternate Earths.

 **2001**  
\- The PRT investigates Nilbog in Ellisburg, Vermont. Emily Piggot and Thomas Calvert are among the only survivors.  
\- Naomi Hunter begins an effort to develop non-Tinkertech nanotechnology as a researcher at the biotechnology firm ATGC.

 **2002**  
\- Camp X-Ray, a black site for housing "enemy combatants," is established at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay.  
\- The Angolan Civil War draws to a close.  
\- Simurgh appears in Lausanne, Switzerland.  
\- Defense contractor ArmTech begins development of the Metal Gear REX on Shadow Moses Island, Alaska.

 **2003**  
\- The Second Congo War draws to a close.

 **2005** \- [ **Metal Gear Solid** : **The Twin Snakes** ]  
\- Shadow Moses Incident.  
\- The deaths of Kazuhira Miller, Donald Anderson (Sigint), and Dr. Clark (Para-Medic).  
\- In the wake of Miller's death, Code Talker assumes oversight of the HEC.  
\- Ocelot leaks the plans for the Metal Gear REX to the public.  
\- Solid Snake and Hal Emmerich establish Philanthropy, an anti-Metal Gear NGO.  
\- Leviathan attacks Newfoundland, Canada.

 **2006**  
\- Nastasha Romanenko, one of Solid Snake's contacts during the Shadow Moses Incident, is assassinated by Contessa.  
\- George Sears (Solidus Snake) resigns from the presidency of the United States, citing health concerns. He is assassinated by Contessa shortly thereafter, but the death is made to appear as if a result of natural causes.  
\- ArmsTech purchases ATGC.

 **2007** \- [ **Metal Gear Solid 2** : **The Sons of Liberty** ] ( **averted** )  
\- The oil tanker USS Discovery sinks in Manhattan Harbor, and work begins on the construction of the Big Shell decontamination facility. However, the incident is a cover for the construction of the first of the Arsenal Gears, a mobile fortress that redundantly links the Trismegistos to terrestrial communications in Earth Bet.  
\- The U.S. Marines adopt the mass-production model Metal Gear RAY as a standard armament.  
\- Deputy Director Steven Armstrong of PRT-Boston approaches ArmsTech to develop combat-purpose nanites for use by PRT Officers. However, the project is discontinued due to budgeting issues.

 **2008**  
\- Annette Hebert dies in a car accident.  
\- Steven Armstrong becomes Director at PRT-Boston.

 **2009**  
\- Leviathan attacks New York. Metal Gear RAYs are deployed to defend the Arsenal Gear situated beneath Big Shell.  
\- Following a traumatic incident, Emma Barnes encounters Sophia Hess.  
\- Weld appears in Boston; he is immediately recruited to the Wards by Director Armstrong.

 **2010**  
\- Hungary revises its citizenship laws. The new terms allow even those who have never resided in the country to become naturalized, provided they are a decedent of a Hungarian citizen and have knowledge of the Hungarian language.  
\- Ocelot initiates "Operation VSS." M.W. Mond is deployed to Brockton Bay.

 **2011** \- [ **Venom** : **On Missing Limbs** ]  
\- Taylor Hebert is hospitalized after suffering severe injuries. She awakens from a coma several months later.  
\- U.S. Marines adopt the mass-production model Metal Gear RAY Mk. II as a standard armament.  
\- Metal Gear Sahelanthropus is incorporated with Tinkertech and reactivated by the Simurgh, placed under the control of an AI pod.  
\- Ocelot becomes Director at the PRT-ENE.

\- _The cape known as "Venom" becomes active._

* * *

 **omake** / **the sins of the father** :

 _July 10th, 1991_ :

 _"Strain A is indeed a descendant of the Wolbachia that I used to treat the vocal cord parasites seven years ago - bred primarily to promote survivability in a cell-free medium. Capacity to withstand body temperatures via the febrile response seems to have been significantly improved as well."_

 _"Given that Lustrum's group wanted to use it as a biological weapon, that's hardly surprising."_

 _"I would say that it's remarkably benign for a so-called 'biological weapon.' Transmission isn't airborne, and infection in a mammal produces only male infertility. Comparatively, the changes in a host produced by a Strain B infection are far more noticeable."_

 _"You mentioned something about parthenogenesis in your last report?"_

 _"Yes. As I've said before, naturally occurring Wolbachia appears in four distinct phenotypes: feminizing, parthenogenic, cytoplasmic-incompatible, and male-killing. The strain intended by Lustrum's group for delivery via an entomological vector was of the parthenogenic variant. Harboring a particular bacteriophage that engages in horizontal gene transfer to simulate within an ovum the genomic imprinting that comes of fertilization, the Wolbachia induces spontaneous parthenogenesis in infected females. In lab rats, it also appears to eliminate the female courtship response."_

 _"I've read that induced parthenogenesis in mammals normally leads to the abortion of the fetus, though. I take it that isn't the case here?"_

 _"It would be the case if the ovum were merely being activated in the absence of an imprinting process. The infected parthenotes we've created, however, have grown to adulthood without developmental complications, and are reproductively viable. Being effectively bi-maternal, and thus lacking in the detriments to ontogenetic lifespan theoretically associated with the paternal genome, they furthermore exhibit an enhanced longevity relative to normal individuals. Given a sufficiently large epidemic, virgin birth would eventually come to be the norm."_

 _"Talk about making men reproductively obsolete."_

 _"I believe that was the point."_

 _There was the sound of something slamming against a table._

 _"Potentially the largest scale bio-terror incident ever to occur on American soil - and all because we let Emmerich carry a biohazard off-base. Rat bastard played us like a damned fiddle!"_

 _"You should be glad that not a single person died of infection. Things would've been much worse if Lustrum's group had gotten their hands on the vocal cord parasites. Attuning their responsiveness to pitch of voice is far less difficult than teaching them a language."_

 _Miller exhaled in disgust._

 _"What ifs don't matter. What matters is what was, and how we're gonna deal with it. Ahab convinced me to show mercy six years ago - and my mercy's spent. I can't be as kind and forgiving as he is."_

 _"What are you planning, Kazuhira?"_

 _"I'll be dispatching a team to Emmerich's home in Florida, even if Ahab disagrees. This time, we'll be making sure that the good doctor's entirely clean."_

 _"You're not intending to-"_

 _"Don't worry. He won't be harmed, physically. Death by the hand of another isn't the fate for somebody like him ..."_

* * *

 **Notes** :

Thus, this fic is concluded and up for adoption. Or, if you don't want to actually adopt, writing snippets is fine too!

a) Fugly Bob's was named after Danny.

b) Yes, Danny literally has spies peeping on his daughter. Big Daddy is Watching You.

c) M.W. Mond was based in concept on Yuki Michio, from Tezuka Osamu's 1976 manga series, MW; and on Rock Holmes / Makube Rokuro, another character by Tezuka. His name was inspired by Mustapha Mond, of the Brave New World, but the pseudonym 'O'Brien' was taken from 1984.

Unused background settings: Mond never married, and never had any children, feeling that the desire to sexually reproduce was an acknowledgement one's own obsolescence. Around 1990, he located a young orphan girl by the name of Matreya, who exhibited a particularly high IQ. Using a refinement of the technique he applied to Venom Snake, he overwrote her personality with his own - indefinitely continuing his own existence as a disembodied meme. The M.W. Mond who goes on to manipulate Taylor is essentially a 'cast-off,' who desires simply to work until he dies. He was also responsible for overwriting Screaming Mantis (Kalika in this setting) with the personality of Psycho Mantis.

d) As far as I can tell, there are two 'science fictions' within MGSV's depiction of Wolbachia. The first is that it's capable of surviving mammalian body temperature. The second is that it would be able to adapt the same method of reproduction it utilizes in insects for survival within a mammalian host. The four phenotypes mentioned by Code Talker are real-world strains named for their varying impact on sexual reproduction. This fic presumes that a mammal-oriented parthenogenic phenotype was developed either by Huey Emmerich or Lustrum's group. Virgin birth (self-cloning parthenogenesis) and the reproductive obselesence of males are real-world phenomena that occur in some species of wasps. Lustrum, being less of an extremist than some of her followers, was probably never informed of the bio-terror plan.

e) The lieutenant of Lustrum that perpetrated the Father's Day 1991 bio-terror threat was a former lover to Annette. Resentful that Annette would abandon her for Danny, she chose the University of New Hampshire for the stage of her hostage-taking, as it was the school that Danny was attending at the time; in Earth Bet, the University of New Hampshire would be situated just outside the city limits of Brockton Bay. By certain means, Danny was lured to the school and administered with the male-sterilizing Strain A Wolbachia.

The actual motive behind the hostage incident has nothing to do with Danny, however. The intent was simply to draw attention while compatriots situated elsewhere prepared to introduce the Strain B Wolbachia to local mosquito populations. If the authorities didn't comply with their stated terms, they would release the biological agent.

f) Sidney Gottlieb and Donald Ewen Cameron are historically extant figures, and MKUltra and Stargate were actual CIA projects. Also, for his expertise in poisons, Gottlieb really was nicknamed 'Black Sorceror.'

g) In the Old Testament Book of Kings, one segment details the conflict between the prophet Elijah and Ahab, the King of Israel, husband to the Baalite princess Jezebel - depicted as a vain, evil woman. For his worship of Baal and other sins, Ahab's court was punished by Elijah - initially by the slaughter of Baalite priests, and subsequently by a prophecy that he and his wife would be killed. Elijah was eventually succeeded by the prophet Elisha / Eliseus, which I considered for use as part of the pseudonym Ocelot selects. The idea was discarded, in part because Liquid always hated the name 'Eli.'

h) Ishmael, incidentally, was the son of Abraham that was cast out of the promised land.

i) The Krasnaya Perchatka mercenary group is led by Olga Sergeyevna Gurlukovich, who goes by the name of Rukavitsa. The girl that might've been known as 'Sunny Gurlukovich' in another world was fathered by Ocelot; she's Ocelot's second child. The first is Joseph Iriomote, of the Brockton Bay Police Department.

j) 'Commander South' was named as Solid Snake's superior officer in the North American packaging for the NES release of Metal Gear. However, the name didn't appear in the game itself, and Big Boss served in this role. This fic presumes that Big Boss' pseudonym during his tenure as the Commander of FOXHOUND was 'John South.'

k) Christos Constantinou is the son of Evangelos Constantinou, the reconstructive surgeon who treated Venom Snake in 1984. He is named after Christos Vasilopoulos, Evangelos' voice actor.

l) As of 2011, Code Talker is over 130 years old. He appears healthier and more physically mobile than he did in 1984, but over 75% of his body mass now comprises of parasites. At some point after 1995, he triggered with the Administrator Shard, which vastly improved the degree of control he exerts over his own flesh.

m) Again, Taylor is not a parahuman. Somebody mentioned in a comment that they would've preferred to see a crossover in which Taylor simply triggered as a parahuman with Venom Snake's ability set. In my opinion, though, the specific skillset of Venom Snake is generic enough that the story wouldn't have felt like a crossover with the Metal Gear Solid continuity - and what's MGS when you cut out all of the extremely convoluted writing? Metal Wolf Chaos?

n) Ocelot took up the name 'Charles Adam Iriomote' as an in-world reference to Charlie's Angels; the HAVEN girls follow him around when he transfers to different branches.

* * *

 **Status of MGS2 and MGS4 in Venom: On Missing Limbs**

A variant of the MGS2 plot occurred, with the following differences:

1) The USS Discovery was not transporting the Metal Gear RAY. It was an actual oil tanker, and its crew did not include any U.S. Marines.  
2) Solid Snake did not infiltrate the USS Discovery. Neither did Ocelot or the Gurlukovich Mercenaries / Krasnaya Perchatka.  
3) The development of the Metal Gear RAY was not a secret project. Furthermore, its capabilities as an anti-Metal-Gear weapon were not stressed in any documentation relating to its features.  
4) Raiden was never deployed to infiltrate Big Shell.  
5) For his hand in the Shadow Moses Incident, Cauldron forced the resignation of Solidus Snake from presidency, and assassinated him before he could mobilize Dead Cell.  
6) Dead Cell was not alienated from the US Government by the manipulations of Trismegistos.  
7) There was no S3 Plan, and Big Shell was never intended for use as a simulation of the events at Shadow Moses Island. Raiden was never selected as a test subject.  
8) Emma Emmerich was never involved in the completion of the Trismegistos AI. A certain Canadian was involved instead, and E.E.'s aid was unnecessary.  
9) Rather than the Big Shell Incident, Leviathan attacked Manhattan in 2009.

Consequently, Dead Cell may still be extant, in a different form. Raiden is off somewhere, doing whatever it is former child soldiers do when they end up as adult military personnel. (Except that in this world, Solidus raised him as an imitation of Jack Slash.)

By 2014, the events of the MGS timeline are sufficiently derailed that it's doubtful the plot of MGS4 can occur in any recognizable form. Relevant facts are as follows:

1) Beyond the first generation nanomachines given by Naomi Hunter to Solid Snake, non-Tinkertech nanotechnology has not advanced as rapidly as in MGS canon. Consequently, ArmsTech has not successfully implemented the Sons of the Patriots System as of 2010 / 2011. In the absence of 3rd Generation nanomachines and the SOP, much of the context for MGS4 is missing.  
2) As of 2011, Solid Snake is still regarded as a fugitive from the law due to the events that occurred on Shadow Moses Island.  
3) The three primary servers of Trismegistos are no longer situated on Earth Bet. Whether Ocelot is realistically capable of gaining access to them, I have no idea.  
4) In 2011, 3 years prior to the canonical events of MGS4, Solid Snake has already learned the whereabouts of Ocelot, and decides to confront him.  
5) Owing to circumstances described in the fic, Ocelot actually allows himself to be seen on American soil.  
6) Unlike the Patriots, Trismegistos is not actively positioning Solid Snake as a countermeasure to Ocelot  
7) Ocelot appears to be preparing Taylor for some grand unspecified purpose, adapting techniques that might have normally been applied to the processing of Raiden during the events of MGS2. (Though, if his ultimate purpose is to have her oppose Cauldron, it's hard to say if anything he's done so far can grant her the ability to defeat Path to Victory.)

That said, it's not entirely impossible that the events of MGS4 might be paralleled, but whatever happens would likely diverge drastically from canon.

* * *

 **Taylor's Abilities**

At this point in time, Taylor has been given "skills" and "capabilities" possessed by her biological parents. The latter refers specifically to capacities innate to an individual - not acquired via learning or training, and not by the use of an external implement or aid. Ergo, Taylor has not obtained abilities granted by use of the iDroid, the Parasite Suit, or parasites in general. Fair game for inheritance are Quiet's skills as an assassin, and her capabilities as a sniper - unassisted by The One That Covers. Because Quiet's baseline skills are not extreme "obvious" in expression, it appears as if the majority of Taylor's skills come from Venom. Furthermore, the capabilities granted by The One That Covers are not inheritable via Quiet's genetics.

In the original concept for this fic, Ocelot planned for Taylor to encounter some major loss after acquainting herself with the "skills" and "capabilities" mentioned above - possibly the death of Danny, or betrayal by Armsmaster. Ideally, she would suffer severe injuries as a result of her defeat, and survive only by way of parasite therapy granted by an agent of Ocelot. Her body would thus be enhanced with a revised / updated strain of The One That Covers - providing her with a facsimile of Quiet's capabilities.

* * *

 **Identity of the XOF Recruit**

She's a major Worm character who was relatively canonical up until some point within the timeframe of this fic - January to June 2011. Following an event that butterflied from Taylor's actions (but wasn't directly caused by Taylor, necessarily; or even traceable to her hand), the character's status quo was massively shaken up, and she was set upon a path of revenge against a certain party. Further on, Cauldron took note of her power, and in the wake of Sahelanthropus' appearance in Boston, chose to intervene and acquire her as an asset - as she might've destroyed herself in seeking vengeance, otherwise.


End file.
